Norse Atlantic Airways Adds Athens-New York, Continues Winter Schedule Cuts
Norse Atlantic Airways is expanding with transatlantic flights from Athens, Greece (ATH) next year.
Starting May 30, 2024, Norse will launch a new route from Athens to New York (JFK). Norse will operate ATH-JFK 5x weekly using its Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner, reducing to 3x weekly in mid-September. The inaugural schedule:
N0 503 Depart ATH 7:30 AM Arrive JFK 11:20 AM
N0 504 Depart JFK 1:10 PM Arrive ATH 5:45 AM (next day)
Currently, American Airlines and Delta Air Lines also serve JFK-ATH, while Emirates and United Airlines offer Newark (EWR) to Athens.
Athens represents Norse’s sixth destination from New York JFK after London Gatwick, Oslo, Berlin, Paris, and Rome.
Norse Significantly Reduces Latter Winter Schedule
As Norse Atlantic Airways continues to head into its second winter season, the airline is progressively reducing its schedule in the coming months.
Norse Atlantic Airways commenced flights in June 2022 with a pure fleet of Boeing 787 Dreamliners. This current Winter 2023/24 season, Norse pivoted towards a strategy of flying more “sun” and “warm” routes, such as Paris (CDG) to Miami (MIA) and London (LGW) to Montego Bay (MBJ). Flights that could be considered “cold-to-cold”, such as Berlin (BER) and Oslo (OSL) to New York City (JFK), have been suspended during the winter, which is a rational choice given the seasonality in transatlantic travel between the U.S. and Europe.
However, this strategy seems to be falling apart as the winter season continues.
In July 2023, Norse Atlantic announced new routes from Miami (MIA) to Paris (CDG) and Berlin (BER), which represented its final additions for the Winter 2023/24 season. At that time, Norse had 14 routes and approximately 64 weekly flights scheduled for the entire season (end of October 2023 through end of March 2024).
Norse did reduce its schedules for the first half of the winter season, but the most significant cuts will be after the holidays. As of today, Norse has cut the mid-January to early March 2024 period to 9 routes and just 23 weekly flights—a 64% decrease in scheduled capacity versus what was originally published back in July.
The table below shows Norse Atlantic’s February 2024 schedule comparing what they sold back as of July 2023 versus what they’re selling right now:
Notes: OSL-BKK, LGW-MBJ/BGI have one additional weekly flight for some weeks. Some routes have varying frequencies by week, so they’re approximated. The past numbers are based on what I had previously recorded, so they may not be 100% accurate, but should be very close.
Over the last few months, Norse has continuously pulled down flights for this winter season, trimming frequencies on almost all routes and recently suspended both Paris-New York and London-Los Angeles between mid-January and mid-March 2024.
Norse Atlantic seems to have been overambitious especially with its Caribbean strategy. The airline scrapped flights to Kingston, Jamaica (KIN) before they began and delayed the launch of Montego Bay (MBJ) and Barbados (BGI) by a month. Just yesterday, the airline made further cuts to its Caribbean schedule, likely illustrating continued weakness in the market. Starting mid-January, Norse will reduce London—Montego Bay from 4x to 1x weekly and London-Barbados from 5x to 1x weekly through the end of the current winter season.
This Caribbean schedule reduction is set to persist in the Winter 2024/25 season. A few days ago, Norse Atlantic opened sales next winter for Montego Bay and Barbados, both of which are scheduled with only one weekly flight. The positive is Norse will be able to capture more of the advanced booking curve with this larger sales window, hopefully improving yields.
Every airline makes schedule cuts, especially during the period after the holidays where demand tends to diminish. However, Norse has cut a disproportionate 64% of its schedule versus what was originally on sale back in July 2023. The carrier drastically overpublished what it sold versus what it now plans to fly.
It’ll be interesting to see if Norse modifies its strategy next winter as they’ve already scheduled less capacity to existing Caribbean routes. Notably, the carrier will have 5 additional Boeing 787s in its own operations as their subleases to another airline expire this coming summer.