Mark Gerrard

The problem is the 787 is having major engine problems at all airlines.

VS brought a couple of A340-600s bac from the desert to cover downtime on B787s.

Spend time at Boeing Field or Paine Field and presumably Charleston and you will notice that whenever a Boeing aircraft is due to depart or arrive on a test flight or delivery flight and you will find Boeing fire service on standby!

oliver2002

Fire service is on standby on any airfield that has test flights, nothing related to the manufacturer or aircraft type.

kiwitrains

Its 2-3-2 Norwegian Premium

cheaptom

Any positive reviews for Norwegian? Looking into a CPH-LAX flight in Business/Premium. The price is right for a direct nonstop. On a Boeing 788. Do the premium seats even lie flat?

Rikki3072

It's not business class. It is premium economy and the seats do not lay flat, but they have a lot of recline and leg room (more than most competing premium economy products). Norwegian premium is great if everything goes well, but there are frequent cancelled flights, significantly delayed flights and flights with equipment substitution (which may be better or worse than the 788 depending on the substituted plane). When something does go wrong, they don't really do a good job of fixing it.

cheaptom

Thanks, I've read so many similar posts. I don't think I want to risk it, but having a nonstop is so tempting to try. Especially since it would be at the end of a cruise and we have nowhere to be. A delay won't kill us. A cancellation would stink but we'd live as long as they put us on another flight. The scariest part of your post is that they don't do a good job of fixing these situations.

CPH-Flyer

They will basically never put you on another airline, but make you wait until they have space on alternative Norwegian flights. If you book it as a one way, you can always ask for a refund and book another flight yourself. But that can be very pricey

spinkid000

I actually just booked myself on Norwegian JFK-LGW next week specifcally for Hi-FLY. They will be using the A380 on select flights. The late night departure from JFK and the 5pm return from Gatwick. I purchaed PE Flex which means I can refund it if they change the AC but as of now I will get bumped into a business seat or perhaps even the first Suite since HI Fly kept the Singapore Interiors and IFE.

Rikki3072

Although, based on FlightAware they have not used substitute aircraft on the CPH-LAX route all summer (I can only look back to May 4). So maybe this is a route where, for whatever reason, they don't substitute equipment. And it looks like the flights run an average of 40 minutes - 1 hour delayed. Not horrible. It also looks like there have been no cancelled flights (although not sure if those stay on FlightAware after the fact). So maybe you should chance it - then you can just worry, like I did for the whole month before the flight, whether it will go smoothly. On the CDG-LAX flight we took, they were substituting equipment all summer (but fortunately not for our flight). The CPH-LAX route seems a safer bet.

beyond

Norwegian is still a big gamble, operations-wise. Last night they ended up cancelling both OAK and JFK CDG after long delays and little information. Many flights are delayed 3-6 hours [I'm talking TATL, not intra-Europe], and they are rarely proactive with information updates, and of course offer no alternatives. It would seem they don't have adequate maintenance contracts at their outpost stations, much less crews etc. And because they have no online checkin to/from the US, you have to deal with the counter and potential unrealistic early cut-off times even when they know the inbound plane is late.

They also don't accurately predict how they're going to swap out planes once there is an issue, i.e. are they going to "steal" one inbound to serve a different outbound than planned in cities where they have multiple flights a day to different destinations.

Yes - any particular delay can mimic what happens at other carriers, with the big difference being that you almost always have some alternatives even if you have to remain within each alliance. Their onboard service, when operations work, can vary a lot but be quite good - but getting there is sometimes impossible.

If all airlines were required to have ticket/bag agreements at least for IROPS, that would greatly reduce the impact of any one carrier's passengers being left with no alternative when delays/cancellations occur. And it's not just LCC's - AA and DL didn't have an agreement for a long time until recently when they implemented one just for IROPS, proving it can be done.

LeoNYC10

Why do you think that is? I am a bit puzzled by this utter disorganization at the company that otherwise seems cutting edge, ahead of its time, etc. Why can't they get their act together in terms of scheduling, these delays without announcements, etc? They have such convenient scheduling and amazing plans, I was about to book a trip on Norwegian. But after reading about these enormous delays and problems, don't want to take a risk. I flew them several years ago from JFK to LGW and everything was fine on both legs - both flights sharp on time, no issues whatsoever. But lately they went off the rails..

klmml

I've never flown Norwegian long-haul, but short haul I always thought they had an excellent product: nice cabin, good BoB selection, good crew, Wifi. A more pleasant experience than any other SH LCC I've experienced recently and even better than say SH BA in some ways (legroom in particular). But my last SH trips (HEL-LGW and return, a route I do with Norwegian several times a year) were a bit more problematic, at least in terms of the outsourced ground handling.

One particular problem seems to be that they've added "priority boarding", which you can pay extra for, but given how boarding works at Gatwick (at the low-numbered gates anyway) is nothing really of the sort - it's a surcharge to stand in front of a closed door rather than sitting in the gate area. At the other end, deplaning at HEL, the handling agents messed up the front stair placement, delaying us by several minutes. In addition, they seem to use the bare minimum number of buses they can get away with.

All these are little niggles, and perhaps I had just got away with it until now - I've seen DY meltdown in IRROPS before, but I factor that in; I was just surprised to see relatively normal operations just not working right. Interestingly, I got my first Nunwood survey from Norwegian after my last trip and I was happy to tell them what I thought - and give them a suitably bad answer to the Net Promoter Score question.

cheaptom

After reading up as much as I could, we opted to go with Air Canada. It was actually cheaper than Norwegian and the seats are ture business class. The down side is a 4-hour layover in YYZ. We really wanted that nonstop CPH-LAX, but thought the riskiness of Norwegian was too much. Although, I do believe the posts that say we'd probably be fine, given that the CPH-LAX flight has a pattern of being late, but never canceled,

Rikki3072

That makes sense. Hopefully going through US customs in Toronto and not LAX will be a better experience as well as an efficient use of that layover.

fireanwater1

Taking the plunge and booking 2x JFK-LGW to finish off a trip next April. This check in system at the airport is annoying though, can't even remember the last time I had to do that.