Norwegian Air (Florida: 2015, places, to work)

[CaseyB]

Originally Posted by Jimrob1

Norwegian flights PVD to Bergen, begin in July.

I can't tell my husband that. He will want to go. He was talking about Bergen a few months ago. I told him my great grandparents were from Bergen and he got all excited. It's supposed to be pretty but I don't know

[Jimrob1]

Originally Posted by CaseyB

I can't tell my husband that. He will want to go. He was talking about Bergen a few months ago. I told him my great grandparents were from Bergen and he got all excited. It's supposed to be pretty but I don't know

The tickets are $89 each way. I would have thought a London flight would come of this. I really have to wonder will these type cities, be profitable from Providence. I certainly hope so. I'm sure your husband will want to go for $89.

[lrfox]

Norwegian can be great (I like them a lot) but remember that they're a TRUE low cost carrier. Meaning that $89 gets you a seat and little else. Checked or bags for the overhead are extra, as are seat assignments, food, and beverages. Pay attention to the ticketing when you buy. "Flex" tickets are often a better deal as they usually include seat assignments and sometimes a checked bag. People who loathe LCCs tend to feel that way because they're caught off guard by one or more of these fees at the airport on the day of departure. If you need to check bags, pay in advance (it's far moss expensive to do it at the airport- same for overhead carry-on bags). It's still usually cheaper than other carriers but these extras can add up, so price it out before you buy. That $89 is as bare bones as it gets.

[jewban]

Going in with appropriate expectations certainly helps a lot when it comes to ULCCs and their fees. What many people don't consider when booking travel is the service recovery options and availability. This is governed in the contract/conditions of carriage which each passenger bound by when purchasing a ticket yet no one bothers reading them.

ULCCs this is particularly challenging for the following reasons:

Limited access to customer service personnel. Most outsource their ground handling and use skeleton crews to save costs so rebooking with the limited airport personnel when a large Dreamliner flight cancels will be frustrating and take forever.

ULCCs don't endorse tickets to other carriers-generally your only options are a refund or rebooking on one of their own flights

ULCCs operate at very high load factors so seating availability for rebooking following irregular operations will likely be sparse

Most flights operate less than daily so it could be several days before you are reaccommodated

Good luck getting any sort of compensation even for an airline caused mechanical


Booking with a credit card that offers trip interruption benefits like Chase Saphire and certain Citi cards helps but these often won't cover the full cost of buying a closein fare on another carrier.

[mdovell]

Actually I'll take back a tad about Bradly. They actually DO have flights to asia but they are not direct and are quite long. There's some flights to Thailand but involve going to Atlanta and the Seoul and then Thailand. There's also some flights to Peru.

[lrfox]

Originally Posted by jewban

Going in with appropriate expectations certainly helps a lot when it comes to ULCCs and their fees. What many people don't consider when booking travel is the service recovery options and availability. This is governed in the contract/conditions of carriage which each passenger bound by when purchasing a ticket yet no one bothers reading them.

ULCCs this is particularly challenging for the following reasons:

Limited access to customer service personnel. Most outsource their ground handling and use skeleton crews to save costs so rebooking with the limited airport personnel when a large Dreamliner flight cancels will be frustrating and take forever.

ULCCs don't endorse tickets to other carriers-generally your only options are a refund or rebooking on one of their own flights

ULCCs operate at very high load factors so seating availability for rebooking following irregular operations will likely be sparse

Most flights operate less than daily so it could be several days before you are reaccommodated

Good luck getting any sort of compensation even for an airline caused mechanical


Booking with a credit card that offers trip interruption benefits like Chase Saphire and certain Citi cards helps but these often won't cover the full cost of buying a closein fare on another carrier.

True. Norwegian's customer service is actually fairly accessible by phone- I don't know that I've waited once. But the rest is spot on. Norwegian isn't Spirit, but the pricing structure is similar.

Originally Posted by mdovell

Actually I'll take back a tad about Bradly. They actually DO have flights to asia but they are not direct and are quite long. There's some flights to Thailand but involve going to Atlanta and the Seoul and then Thailand. There's also some flights to Peru.

That's really applicable for any airport with a flight on a mainline carrier to the mainline carriers hub. So if Bradley has even a single flight on Delta to Atlanta, you can connect anywhere Delta flies (or a carrier with a codeshare agreement flies) from Atlanta. It's really not something unique to Bradley or any other airport. For example, If you want to fly from Nantucket to Asia, Europe, Africa or South America in the summer you can- Delta flies between JFK and Nantucket and you can book a flight on Delta from Nantucket to anywhere Delta flies from JFK with one stop. At the same time, it would be dishonest to say that Nantucket has flights to Asia, Africa, Europe, or S. America. It doesn't. When you say a place "has flights" to somewhere you're really talking about directs. You can fly to most places from most places, but direct flights are really the only ones that count as "having flights." Hub connections are great, but they're not unique. It's neat to be able to get on a plane in Boston and get off in Tokyo. It's neat to get on a plane in Bradley and get off in Dublin. Same for Providence to Bergen. It's not particularly special to get on a plane at Bradley, get off in Atlanta, and get on another to __________. That's how hubs work.

[Dm84]

Originally Posted by mdovell

Actually I'll take back a tad about Bradly. They actually DO have flights to asia but they are not direct and are quite long. There's some flights to Thailand but involve going to Atlanta and the Seoul and then Thailand. There's also some flights to Peru.

It's called a layover.

Let's he honest, no one wants to fly direct to Hartford from overseas. Norwegian is only flying there to save money and they're banking that people won't mind driving out of the way to save a few bucks.

[mdovell]

Originally Posted by Dm84

It's called a layover.

Let's he honest, no one wants to fly direct to Hartford from overseas. Norwegian is only flying there to save money and they're banking that people won't mind driving out of the way to save a few bucks.

To a point but the CT governor put a ton into transit between that and rail and the buses.

Many places pretty much have buses or some routes connecting. Many that go to DC go to BWI and then over (Reagan costs more and security is higher) That's 32 miles away and easily an hour.

You also have to figure not everyone wants to go to Logan to go to Europe. Smaller airports with less traffic can be a draw. I love flying and frankly I don't mind but I personally don't think I could take my parents to one the size of JFK.

[Dm84]

Originally Posted by mdovell

To a point but the CT governor put a ton into transit between that and rail and the buses.

Many places pretty much have buses or some routes connecting. Many that go to DC go to BWI and then over (Reagan costs more and security is higher) That's 32 miles away and easily an hour.

You also have to figure not everyone wants to go to Logan to go to Europe. Smaller airports with less traffic can be a draw. I love flying and frankly I don't mind but I personally don't think I could take my parents to one the size of JFK.

lol the Governor of CT put a ton of money into transit to move people from an airport no one wants to fly into to a city that's reliant on a single industry that again, few people want to go to. Hartford isn't a tourist destination and doesn't have a very large population.

[GeoffD]

Originally Posted by Dm84

lol the Governor of CT put a ton of money into transit to move people from an airport no one wants to fly into to a city that's reliant on a single industry that again, few people want to go to. Hartford isn't a tourist destination and doesn't have a very large population.

Gimme a break. BDL moved 3 million passengers last year. Providence did 3.6 million. Manchester did 2 million. BDL is a large regional airport. I use PVD and MHT a lot. They're tourist-Florida airports and otherwise only go to hubs. They're useless if you're trying to get west of the Mississippi or to Canada. Sure, Logan is 10x bigger and has a lot more city pairs but it's pure hell getting to the airport from the south or the west. You have to allocate an extra hour for the traffic jam and commuter rail doesn't mesh with air travel where you land at Logan at night or on weekends when the rail service is lousy.

Compare BDL to PVD and MHT. BDL has Montreal & Toronto Air Canada service. You can get to LAX, Vegas, Denver, IAH and DFW. United is adding SFO.

From Providence and Manchester, you can get to ATL, CLT, Detroit, and the two Chicago airports. They're Florida tourist airports with service to the east coast hub airports.

BDL is the regional airport for western Mass, most of Connecticut, and the chunks of Vermont and New Hampshire that can get to I-91. It has service appropriate to that kind of population base.

My biggest problem is the same one I have with MHT and PVD. Limited competition so the flights tend to be expensive.