sethMCOflyer

Shocked they made it this far, good night sweet prince.

Tino

Now I am really happy I chose a refund for my discontinued flight over a "credit + bonus".

CPH-Flyer

I guess they will only keep the cuts to the product. The cuts to the pricing they will do their best to eliminate.

oliver2002

I said pricing models... ie the the Y light models where everything else costs extra

CPH-Flyer

Ahhh I mistook that one... Yeah, that's going to stick.

ColOrd

Is that a bad thing though? Is there a longer legacy to DY promoting the EasyJet effect with places like New York or Miami where particularly younger travellers would look at a cheap long weekend as viable because of the unbundled fares?

Also, do we suspect that IAG will now quietly drop LEVEL? It seems to have no real place in the market anymore?

Akoz

IAG closed most of Level in Europe last year, only a small Spanish unit left now.

GUWonder

Blaming Norwegian for EU legacy majors' "unbundling" really comes across as trying to blame Norwegian for something that wasn't Norwegian's doing. The blame for the US and EU legacy majors' "unbundling" rests with the US and EU legacy majors that did just that, expanding something that they had already gotten in the business of doing in ways even when Norwegian wasn't much of anything for TATL flying.

US airlines were already on board the "unbundling" bandwagon before Norwegian was much of anything for US airlines. And when the US airlines decided it was going to result in boosting management's returns on shareholdings/options and shareholder returns, they not only decided to expand it to TATL trips but already had made sure that their portly carnal (JV) airline buddies in the EU would be on the same bandwagon.

oliver2002

LH specifically launched longhaul economy light ex the Scandic countries to counter the threat that Norwegian posed to their market share. Norwegian had established this bare bones LCC long haul pricing model as an acceptable norm and the majors followed to get back on the top of the fare search pile.

GUWonder

LH went into unbundling with ex-Scandinavia long-haul travel because LH wanted to try to kill of Norwegian TATL long-haul competition. Norwegian wasn't seen by LH (or the rest of the US3 and EU3) as playing nicely since Norwegian wasn't inflating prices to match the US3+EU3 TATL prices that were padding the US3 and the EU3 carriers' pockets with beaucoup bucks.

The US3+EU3 have wanted to dance on the grave of Norwegian for quite some time because Norwegian wasn't wholly in on following the signals from the US3+EU3. As far as LH and the rest of the US3+EU3 were concerned, Norwegian's cardinal sin was Norwegian's failure to de facto collude on pricing with the US3+EU3 in the market against the consumers.

Scrooge McDuck

Undercutting EU3+US3 prices sounds good for the customer. However, they were losing money even before Covid-19, so their prices were somewhat too low for a break even. That is not sustainable and the result is an airline which is almost extincted and lots of employees losing their job.

Complaining that the EU and US carriers did charge more for the same routing does not help, as it looks like one needs to charge more for covering the costs.

GUWonder

The EU3+US3 were able to charge as much as they did because of all the governmental waivers and favors they were granted by governments on both sides of the North Atlantic -- waivers and favors granted to such an extent that the US3+EU3 could engage in an extraordinary fleecing of long-haul flying consumers.

If Norwegian would have been able to financially make its long-haul network sustainable in the TATL marketplace, it would have eaten into the last great hope of the EU3 carriers who were getting eaten alive in the short-haul market and facing growing problems from the GCC3+TK for longer haul travel to places to the east and south.

Government-enabled supplier surplus is what the US3+EU3 had gotten because of all the governmental waivers and favors given them for TATL flying. If Norwegian were able to succeed at making itself financially sustainable in long-haul TATL flights without all the governmental waivers and favors granted to the US3+EU3 for TATL flying, Norwegian and de novo Norwegian copycats would risk not only the government-enabled supplier surplus the US3+EU3 had but also it would have put into question the need for governments to grant the legacy majors those waivers and favors and future government aid.

CPH-Flyer

The pricing of Norwegian TATL was not sustainable as their financials clearly showed. WOW was another example of the pricing at that level could not be sustainable.

A secondary issue on that was that they created a skewed concept of what an expensive ticket is. When people start seriously believing that a 2,700 DKK return ticket from Copenhagen to New York is actually quite expensive, there is something wrong with the expectations. 2700 is a decent lump of money, and if you have take a family of four to New York, it does sum up to a substantial dent in most families' budget, no denying that, but for being transported across the Atlantic and back again it is not expensive.

The JVs and airline clusters do not do us any favours for sure. I can just look at what I have to pay to start my journey in Japan. Unless I plan eons in advance, a return to Europe in Y gets close to 2,000 USD, a business class will start close to 5,000 and work its way up.

Competition is healthy and good, competion based on actors in the market that can never make money is not though.

James91

I think there will be another Norwegian. I also don't think that we will see fares rise like we did before, not with Business travel being permanently reduced (it's delusional to think it will go back to like it was before). I see a future for airlines with just Y and Y+. But I agree that DY probably were charging too little at times; it seemed like they were assuming people would always purchase add on luggage, food etc, but most of my friends in their 20s just got really good at packing very little and bringing food with them.

Scrooge McDuck

Well said and correct as these actors damage healthy competitors, kill jobs and remove taxes and social security paid.