Norwegian has been trying to optimize their route network lately, as they've focused on profitability rather than growth. One interesting change Norwegian has made in the past 12 months is some of the airports they fly to. No, I'm not talking about the general regions they fly to as such (though they've changed some of…
Continue reading: Norwegian Ending Oakland Flights In 2020
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I think your last paragraph hit the nail on the head.
Once they moved some flights to SFO they suffered incrementally worse economics at OAK. They may have also realized better economics at SFO than they anticipated.
This was a good nonstop option for Bay Area, now it's a great one with this move. We found their seats very comfortable and service better than expected for LC airline. The title had me worried they were pulling from the market for a minute though!
Too bad Oakland is so much easier to get to than SFO. It's small, not enough food but I'd still rather fly out of Oakland than slog over to SFO.
This should free up space in OAK's Escape lounge 🙂
It had become unusable before the DY departures.
The US market for secondary airports has been really weird. Look at San Jose airport as a place that was doing big numbers, then went down something like 50%, and now it slowly recuperating. In the Boston area, both Providence and Manchester had a boom and a bust. Providence was also a mini international hub that has since lost most of those options.
Geographically, I would think Oakland would do well because its much easier to get to from the east. Similar to how Newark has the entire NJ market on top of a NYC option.
LCCs often seem to try Oakland first (lower costs, I assume) and if things go well move much of their operation to SFO eventually. Remember that jetBlue served OAK first and had a pretty big operation there before moving most of it over to SFO.
Norwegian's principal market for these flights is Europeans travelling to the the Bay Area. Few people in Europe have heard of Oakland and so their flights simply did not feature in any of the flight searches - Google, Momono, Kayak, Skyscanner, Expedia or whomever. Norwegian added San Francisco to Oakland's name on its own site, but couldn't influence other sites. San Jose (also little known to most Europeans) is difficult from Europe but it's principally a business market so people will have been told that there's where they should fly. Hence BA and LH can keep the flights going.
Too bad, OAK is so much more convenient and easy to get in and out of. SFO is a mess and more prone to weather delays.
oh well, that was nice while it lasted. My last flight home on Norwegian, i timed my journey from stepping off the plane to my doorstep (also in the East Bay): 27 minutes. I was through customs and at the Rideshare curb @ Oakland in under 6 minutes.
I'm not surprised by their complete pullout of OAK. I few the Rome-Oakland route last year and thought the airport was woefully prepared to handle international arrivals, let alone multiple arrivals at the same time. It took them nearly a half hour to get an free gate, then 2 out of the 3 global entry machines were out of order and the 2 baggage carousels were inundated with 3 flights arriving around the same time, which meant my bags took over an hour to come out. I've never flown internationally out of OAK since.
I would say a good move. Booked Norwegian flight to Oslo last month for next summer and saw it automatically updated departing from SFO this morning. Flew to Barcelona and Rome via OAK couple years back and felt OAK definitely is not ready to handle international flight, huge line in Global Entry with just a few machines. Yes, SFO commute is not as convenient as OAK but the custom process is much better.
While I find it a bit hard to believe as a Bay Area resident that "we cannot find SJC or OAK" on the list when searching for flights until I actually tried to search for awards on BA only to find that entering "SJC" didn't return any results. I was supposed to search for "San Francisco" and then there was some weird hybrid of "San Francisco, CA - San Jose,CA". Now the search is better, but I can see the same issue for people looking for Oakland and DY flights.
Thinking of flying them to Gatwick from MIA.
How is their Premium comfort level ?
I’m 6’4” and fly business on all international flights, but the price they are showing is unbeatable
Lucky, why do you always talk about yield? If you knew anything about revenue management, you would know it's about optimizing load factor.