PLAY will serve New York Stewart from June 9th, bringing European service to the airport for the first time in nearly three years. It’ll be the carrier’s third US route, joining Baltimore (taking off on April 20th) and Boston (May 11th). Stewart’s previous long-haul service has been short-lived, but B787-operating Norse Atlantic is likely to begin too.
Transatlantic flights return to NY Stewart
Iceland’s PLAY is betting on very low (and probably free) charges, financial incentives, no slots, and no congestion, enabling low costs to offer low fares to grow demand. The contrast with JFK and Newark is clear, but it’s not this simple.
The counterbalance, of course, is Stewart’s location, about 70 miles (113km) from the Port Authority bus terminal in Manhattan. That’s a similar distance to Hahn-Frankfurt and Beauvais-Paris. While Europeans are seemingly more forgiving of relative inconvenience for a lower fare (or the perception of it), Americans seem less willing.
It isn’t Stewart’s location per se. It’s more about access to the airport, although a dedicated bus service will run. It’s timetabled for (an optimistic?) 75 minutes in the off-peak period, less than for the above-mentioned European examples.
Stewart’s location will inevitably put off distantly located New Yorkers, probably reducing the size of that point of sale market. However, PLAY’s CEO is adamant that serving Stewart means much more than simply appealing to those going to/from Manhattan.
Stay aware: Sign up for my weekly new routes newsletter.
Norwegian had five Europe routes
Norwegian served Stewart from Europe between June 2017 and September 2019. Edinburgh was the first to begin, kicking off on June 15th. Dublin and Shannon followed on July 1st, Bergen on July 2nd, and Belfast on July 3rd.
While the routes were due to be served by B737 MAX 8s, delays in their delivery meant they were initially operated by regular B737-800s instead. The next generations obviously had far greater fuel consumption, which is disproportionately important on long routes.
Norwegian’s transatlantic operations didn’t last long, including by its B737s. Many cuts were made, helping to reduce the losses generated across its long-haul network. Then COVID happened, with Norwegian retreating to focus on its core short-haul market.
Over 323,000 Europe passengers in 2018
According to the DOT’s T-100 dataset, Norwegian transported over 323,000 passengers to/from Stewart in 2018 with an average seat load factor (SLF) of 72.5%:
- Stewart to Dublin (DUB): 169,401 round-trip passengers; a SLF of 75.5%
- Stewart to Edinburgh (EDI): 63,690; 77.3%
- Stewart to Shannon (SNN): 44,569; 67.0%
- Stewart to Belfast (BFS): 23,944; 74.1%
- Stewart to Bergen (BGO): 21,971; 68.4%
I don’t have fare or revenue per passenger information. Still, they were probably reasonably iffy given the newness of service, year-round service for all routes, and, especially for Dublin, a considerable amount of capacity – twice-daily in the summer. Shannon and Edinburgh operated daily in November/December 2018 too.
Norwegian probably overexpanded by offering too many seats for sale, pushing fares even lower yet still achieving mediocre SLFs, although the routes hadn’t long started. It would be interesting to model potential performance for a summer-only service (competing with peak demand and pricing) and a lower-frequency offering with very fuel-efficient aircraft.
Is Norse Atlantic going to serve Stewart?
In September, startup B787 operator Norse Atlantic revealed that it’d initially serve Stewart, Ontario, and Fort Lauderdale from its Oslo base. After receiving its Norwegian air operator’s certificate and approval to fly to the US, the carrier said it’ll begin launch with one of the three routes before serving the others. The question is: which?
What do you make of Stewart to Europe? Let us know in the comments.
