WNHHTraveler

Well, I did they upgrade but it ended up being $351 because they charged me another $42 for seat reservation. Even though I already paid this for my original seat in economy. Grrr.

mrbreeze, I believe they assign you a seat at checking if you don't pay for a seat reservation.

mrbreeze

Do they assign a seat at check-in for free? Is check-in itself free?

chrisljo

Yes to both.

davidng150

Read a recent article about quite a few flight delays earlier this month, some over 15-30 hours.

http://www.newsinenglish.no/2014/05/...ir-passengers/.

Will be flying FLL-OSL later this month, should I be worried about delays?

sfx

If you are worried, change to another carrier.

I'd not worry if my flight was weeks away. They have to secure alt aircraft.

CPH-Flyer

I have been to Copenhagen Airport.5 times over the last week, there has been a plane from Euro Atlantic every time. So they have back up plans in action to ensure that the flights operate. But one flight was leaving with a 16h plus delay. Of course this is only snapshot, and does not really show the state of the operations.

WNHHTraveler

Arghhh....so my payment for the upgrade to premium cabin set off a fraud alert on my debit card (as it was a foreign transaction), the payment was rejected but Norwegian still lists me as being booked in the premium cabin. I have called them twice and they are totally unhelpful. I try to explain that the payment was rejected, they need to reprocess it... but all I get back is we show you in the premium cabin, you have a premium meal ordered, etc. They are unwilling to dig any deeper than that and/or reprocess my payment. My bank tells me that there is nothing that the bank can do on their end, Norwegian must reprocess the payment.

So, now I'm afraid that Norwegian will boot me back to economy when they discover the error.....after I've already given up my previous desirable economy seat, 6F.

I realize I may not get any advise here, but just venting a little. I can't believe that the Norwegian reps are totally unwilling to look into the financial aspect of ticketing. Crossing my fingers that it all works out.

jtmnyc00

Booked UA SFO Oslo for $530. Good deal run thanks to competition.

Quark999

Because of vested interests (I will be on the inaugural LGW-LAX on July 2nd) and worrying about Dreamliner delays etc., I spent some time compiling the full schedule for the new LGW flights to the US. Maybe someone finds it as interesting as I did.

Several things I took away from this:
a) It is a *single* Dreamliner stationed at Gatwick. Kinda makes sense, but considering they serve LAX, JFK and FLL I had to compile that list to truly believe it. So this is indeed a fairly limited experiment.

b) The turnaround times are not nearly as bad as I thought they would be. They're stretching things at the US end, as that is only ever 1:30h exactly, but the plane is on the ground in Gatwick anywhere from 3 to 6 hours each time! That gives me more confidence in them actually sticking to the schedule without knock-on effects, as there is time to recover at LGW. Might not leave the US on time, but hopefully the followup flight from LGW would be.

c) A few days ago, my return flight from LAX on the 20th was moved forward by 30 minutes. That's what triggered my little investigation - and lo and behold, at the other end, the Monday turnaround at LGW (from LAX->LGW to LGW->FLL) is the shortest there is, at (now) 2:45h. That explains why they moved my return - they probably cut the original 5:05h at LGW on Sunday to 4:35h, to gain half an hour on Monday.

Here it is - I started with Wed, as that's when the first Norwegian US flight leaves on the 2nd of July.

oliver2002

This is a crazy schedule... trying to fly longhaul equipment for more than 17h a day with no back is just asking for trouble. Could be that they turn the aircraft to OSL/CPH/ARN in JFK or FLL?

GUWonder

DY could and likely at least sometimes will do the turn in the US. I expect that they are going to be wanting to eliminate (or otherwise see relative non-enforcement of) EC 261/2004-type regulation given how hard they want to work these machines.

Quark999

I think it is the "back up" that is the problem - if you use the average LGW time of 4 hours, add the 1 1/2 hours in the US you end up at 18.5 hours a day. I don't think that's impossible in itself.

It could be that they rotate through Dreamliners somehow. However, the schedule matches up nicely, highlighted by my flight that was moved forward by half an hour to give more time to the subsequent departure to FLL. So I do think that this is one plane doing this full-time.

I just checked a few Oslo/Stockholm arrivals/departures of 787, which conveniently were delayed so it's easy to spot what inbound delays what outbound, and they do seem to have schedules like BKK -> OSL -> JFK. The times on the ground in Oslo or Stockholm seem to be much shorter than in LGW, which probably explains their current problems. I am sure that if they had more planes in LGW, they would start cutting down on the LGW side as well, but there's no point at the moment with the destinations they are flying, as long as they don't do short European hops on the 787 from LGW.

As an aside, it seems Norwegian has just taken delivery of its final two 787s (for now), and is running something like proving trials on the LGW to Stockholm route with a 787 from May till the end of July...

callum9999

Are there any airlines on the planet that don't want to eliminate or see EC261 not be enforced?

oliver2002

Hmm.... EI-LNC just did OSL-FLL-CPH-FLL-ARN a few days ago, LNB too: http://www.flightradar24.com/data/airplanes/ei-lnb

SAS turns their A330 fleet the same way: The aircraft from ARN to EWR goes back to CPH, the CPH to OSL and the OSL to ARN. An example: http://www.flightradar24.com/data/airplanes/ln-rkn/

GUWonder

Probably, as not all airlines are covered by EC261/2004. Either way, I would rather see EC261/2004 remain and be further enforced.