Norse Atlantic may have to settle for London Stansted

Norse Atlantic Airways (Oslo Gardermoen) has so far focused on launching its transatlantic routes from London Gatwick when it starts operations next spring, but for now, it has only been allocated slots at smaller London Stansted, the British travel news site TTG reported citing filings to slot coordinators.

Last month, the Norwegian start-up said that it would launch non-stop flights from Fort Lauderdale Int’l to Paris, London, and Oslo Gardermoen in 2022. The first route is expected to be from Oslo at the end of March 2022. It also plans to serve transatlantic services to Ontario in the Los Angeles area and Newburgh near New York.

The filings show that the airline asked slot manager Airport Coordination Limited for 2,722 slots at Stansted for next summer and received the entire allocation. It also applied for 5,445 slots at Gatwick but failed to secure them in the preliminary allocation process.

While both Gatwick and Stansted did not respond to TTG’s request for comment, a Norse Atlantic Airways spokesperson said: “We view both Gatwick and Stansted as potential bases for our UK operation, and we are still keeping our options open.”

In an e-mail to the Norwegian online business newspaper E24 Næringsliv, Norse Atlantic Airways CEO Bjørn Tore Larsen said: “We are confident we will get the departure and landing permits we want at Gatwick, and at the same time we also consider Stansted an attractive airport for Norse.”

JetBlue Airways (B6, New York JFK), which launched its inaugural service to Gatwick in late September, asked for 650 new Gatwick slots and was granted 552, which implies that Norse Atlantic Airways’ failure to obtain slots there comes, in part at least, as JetBlue looks to expand.

Besides its better facilities, Gatwick is attractive in terms of the Norwegian market due to its direct connections with Gardermoen. For now, however, Norse has found itself on the waiting list, dependent on carriers that have already been allocated slots resigning some of them by the deadline of January 15, 2022.