NORWEGIAN AIR WOOED
Authority seeking response to its overture
The end of Pittsburgh’s long drought without a nonstop flight to London could rest with a budget Norwegian airline that is rapidly growing in the United States.
Norwegian Air Shuttle definitely is looking at Pittsburgh as “a potential viable destination to launch flights from Europe” over the next couple of years, said Anders Lindstrom, director of communications.
“Absolutely, Pittsburgh is on the radar for the next few years. It comes back to the aircraft type and capability,” he said Thursday.
The discount carrier emerged as a potential candidate for a London-Pittsburgh route in an interview that its CEO Bjorn Kjos gave to CNN last month.
In it, Mr. Kjos said a new jet dubbed the Boeing 797 now under design could fly about 250 passengers efficiently from London to medium-size cities like Pittsburgh and Memphis.
That prompted the Allegheny County Airport Authority, which operates Pittsburgh International Airport, to reach out to the executive in an effort to gauge his airline’s interest in such a flight.
“Nothing’s happened yet. We wrote a letter that said, ‘Thank you for your kind comments. We’d love to discuss it with you.’ There’s been no response,” authority CEO Christina Cassotis said last week.
Pittsburgh hasn’t had a nonstop flight to London since November 2004, when US Airways dropped the route while dismantling its hub here. Norwegian Air Shuttle was just 2 years old at the time.
The carrier is not looking at Pittsburgh “near term,” meaning the next couple of months, Mr. Lindstrom said. But it
could move toward take off as the airline takes delivery of more than 200 new airplanes over the next couple of years.
Among the planes it will be receiving are Airbus A321 jets that have the capability to fly between Pittsburgh and London, Mr. Lindstrom said. Norwegian Air Shuttle expects delivery of those jets in 2019. That, he added, “will create opportunities for Pittsburgh.”
In response to Mr. Lindstrom’s comments, Bob Kerlik, an airport authority spokesman, said, “We’re thrilled that Norwegian recognizes the strength of the Pittsburgh market, as did Wow and Condor, who joined Delta [in flying] to Europe this year.
“London is an important market for us and we look forward to working with them in exploring what we can do together,” he said.
Mr. Kerlik added that the authority had reached out to the airline in the past but that nothing came of it.
Norwegian Air Shuttle has been expanding rapidly in the United States since receiving approval from the U.S. Department of Transportation last year to fly into the country from European Union destinations.
It has announced flights from a number of U.S. cities, including Orlando, Fort Lauderdale, Denver, Seattle, Providence, New York, Los Angeles, Oakland/San Francisco, Chicago, and Austin, to various European destinations starting either this year or in 2018.
“There will be a lot more expansion in the United States. We’re very committed to this market,” Mr. Lindstrom said.
The low-cost carrier, based in Oslo, is comparable to others in the United States and Europe. It charges for things like checked bags, drinks and snacks. Earlier this year, it was offering $65 to $99 oneway fares to the United Kingdom and Irish destinations from smaller northeastern airports in the U.S. such as Providence and Hartford.
Ms. Cassotis said Norwegian Air Shuttle is similar to Wow Air, which started nonstop flights to Iceland in June from Pittsburgh International with connections to a number of European destinations. It offered starting one-way fares as low as $99 to Iceland and $149 to Europe.
Condor Airlines also began offering seasonal service twice a week to Frankfurt, Germany, from Pittsburgh the same month.
The airport authority has been actively courting British Airways to launch a nonstop flight to London from Pittsburgh. But so far the airline hasn’t taken the bait.
Blair Pomeroy, a longtime aviation strategy consultant who has worked with British Airways in the past, said he expects the airline to announce another U.S. destination soon, but that it won’t be Pittsburgh.
Mr. Pomeroy said he has been told by British Airways officials that the authority has been losing out because it has not been willing to offer the same multi-year risk-sharing packages that some other cities are in an effort to score the service.
Maryland, for instance, is offering British Airways nearly $6 million a year to maintain its nonstop service to London from Baltimore. Last year, New Orleans got the prestigious flight after its tourism bureau offered the airline $1.4 million a year for three years to help the flight.
Ms. Cassotis has said that money is not the reason Pittsburgh isn’t getting the flight. Mr. Kerlik said Thursday that while the authority won’t divulge its offer, Mr. Pomeroy’s statement regarding the lack of a similar risk-sharing package isn’t accurate.