Ldnn1

No the credit card protection (for UK cardholders) covers the costs of replacement flights too. You'll have to pay out for them first and then claim back, but if you have the cash flow, it's pretty solid protection.

V10

From a customer perspective, I don't think that gloating over perceived airline difficulties - on either side - is particularly helpful.

jeremyBA

Flexible preferences

Michael O'Leary has claimed they will go bust this winter. He said he was "shocked they are still flying as they are losing heroic sums of money". Apparently they have Ł2 billion of debt. Yes, Ł2 billion. From a consumer perspective be careful, have airline failure insurance or as others have said use a UK credit card and have cashflow in case the worst happens.

https://m.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/uk/norwegian-hits-back-after-ryanair-claims-it-will-go-bust-this-winter-37312450.html

simons1

IAG share price is also down, almost 13% in 3 weeks.

orbitmic

Indeed. One shouldn't read too much into the stock markets, which is a thing easily done. I think that there is also a danger about building a strawman argument. I haven't seen anyone argue that DY will spell the end of BA, nor even that it's become transatlantic leader, nor should they. The article points out to a quirky but symbolic figure and just shows that for the time being, DY has become an important player on transatlantic traffic. It's become a global European airline so it is hard to compare it to single hub airlines, and it is of course a very specific model. It is quite possible that its passenger number milestone was limited to the peak summer season and that BA and the likes will surpass it again in passenger numbers now that we return to a season where business traffic accounts for a larger share, but its limits notwithstanding, the phenomenon this article talks about does illustrate a number of things:

- Somehow, in a fairly short period of time, DY has become a household name for transatlantic traffic. I am genuinely surprised by the number of American friends and colleagues who now know about it (and have an opinion on it, sometimes good, sometimes bad, which also makes it a "real" airline). A mere two years ago, this would not really have been the case;

- There is no doubt that DY has led legacy airlines and notably BA to "react" somehow: I don't think we would have seen such a quick development of the likes of Economy basic long haul and Level without DY;

- BA, AF, and LH would love to see DY go bust in the same way they long hoped U2 and FR would go bust and in the same way they would have loved EK, EY, and QR to go bust. They have pronounced those deaths so often over the years that it is now sometimes very hard to differentiate between educated analysis by airline professionals and wishful thinking. Maybe DY will collapse (no one is safe in this industry, remember Panam, TWA, and Swissair, and there are significant issues with DY's fast expansion and operations) or maybe it won't, but their eagerness to pronounce them dead for years already perhaps says more about those legacy airlines themselves and the limitations of their answer to new threats than about the competitors which they so wish were not there.

Calchas

I had thought that Section 75 covered all losses, including consequential losses, caused by the supplier failing to uphold the contract. But I have no doubt that you might have to fight for it.

Phil the Flyer

hfly

There are so many caveats to this that it is crazy............. It is not London, nor the UK to the "NYC area", it is "Transatlantic" passengers to the NYC area, and "Non-US carriers" at that.

So this means that DL, AA and UA have far more Transatlantic passengers.

Also, what airports are we talking about here BA flies mostly from LHR, with a couple of flights from LGW and a flight from LCY. These fly to JFK and EWR. From the definition given in this "press release" Norwegian operates something like 20 routes from all over Europe into 3, 4 or 5 airports that could possibly (not by anyone who actually knows what they are talking about) "NY airports", JFK, EWR, SWF, BDL and PVO. This is in no way Apples for Apples.

I wonder what number of AA pax are flying at least one was on an AA plane with a BA flight number, I know I have several times? 10% of the total? 20%?

As Norwegian can mess with the numbers why not also throw all the other IAG pax into the "NY area" as well from Europe? Aer Lingus and Iberia have a fair number of passengers don't they?

It reminds me of the press release months back when Norwegian claimed that one of their flights was the fastest ever to cross the Atlantic?!?!

Often1

This is just another one of those silly stories which is then posted on FT (in this case without even a quote of the key language) as suggesting that it has any meaning.

All that matters is PRASM. Anybody can fill an aircraft if they charge little enough. The question is whether they can survive and that is up in the air for DY. Not for BA.

The hop over the North Atlantic is a revenue-sharing JV for BA with AA. Thus, the BA numbers alone don't even mean anything.

If anyone wants to suggest that the article can be read as meaning that DY and not BA will be around 12 months from now, I will take that bet.

truncated

Data is from the PANYNJ so JFK, EWR and SWF -- I really doubt anyone would consider Hartford or Providence part of the New York area by any stretch of the imagination, and neither BDL nor PVD are managed by the Port Authority anyway given they're in the wrong states... There are other things that one can take issue with in the article but geography probably isn't one of them. Also this isn't a press release it's a Reuters piece...

Jagboi

Are you implying that all BA passengers originate in London? That a passenger flying NCE-JFK on BA shouldn't be counted as a "transatlantic" passenger?

callum9999

People on here have claimed Norwegian is going to go bust any minute now for several years ...

Just like the decades long and never ending "this latest BA budget cut is the beginning of the end of BA!", I don't think the majority of you know what you're talking about.

Though I will of course concede Norwegian is in a far more precarious stage of existence so a collapse is certainly plausible. I'd however wager they're more likely to temper their rapid growth and focus on margins than to collapse. The Primera comparison is nonsense - Norwegian is well established and, although is overreaching, is fundamentally profitable.

callum9999

It does have a meaning... Norwegian are now carrying more passengers to NYC than BA - how does that NOT mean anything?

Having passengers in the first place is a pretty crucial requirement to generate PRASM.

No one has made that suggestion, or even come remotely close to even hinting at it. Now who's being silly...

hfly

It may be from Reuters, but it reads like a press release.

Yes BA passengers may originate in Nice, and they may also fly to anyone of another 24 or so destinations in North America with BA, or have bought a ticket partially operated with BA and Iberia, Aer Lingus or AA.

Lastly, when discounting Stewart, which no one has really ever entered into any calculus about "The NYC area" before, the numbers are a lot less impressive. It all becomes a non-story though when one considers that BA almost solely operates from LHR (yes they have 3 flights that are not from LHR, out of maybe 15), while the Norwegian numbers can include something like KEF-SWF.