Norwegian Air Granted London Heathrow Slots?!

Ben do you know if Norwegian can sell these slots too?
Easy cash for them if they can.

Wouldn’t be shocked if they sold them - would help with their debt issues - or if they entered the lottery as part of their new venture with JetBlue in the hopes that JB will buy or inherit the slots.

@mkcol my first thought when reading this too. They may just have entered knowing if they got slot they could just sell them on.

Out of interest, where is the space for these slots generated from?

Heathrow actually has slots available. They are just not slot pairs that are economically viable (viz. Arrival and departure that can be many hours apart or on different days or only partial season), and most airlines don't care to leave an aircraft parked sometimes for 2 or more days before the next slot is available. If someone wants ad-hoc or non-series Heathrow slots, they are there for the asking.

Also, you can't sell slots until you have actually used them for 2 seasons.

Seeing as Norwegian have no feed at LHR, they should aim for a strong O&D market. LHR-JFK comes to mind...

I live in another part of the UK and any tome I’ve flown to Heathrow to connect, it’s always been delayed. Usually late take off and then also in a holding pattern waiting to land. Nearly missed my honeymoon flight to Bilbao because of this - thankfully we just had hand luggage so made it, despite having to change terminals. Do long haul flights/larger air craft get priority landing?

It’s always been BA that I’ve flown GLA-LHW with. If I’m going to central London, I get the train as it’s 4.5 hours direct to Euston.

A bit off topic, but Norwegian announced earlier this week that they will cut every single long-haul flight from the Nordics. Got a lot of attention in Swedish and Norwegian press.

Perhaps Norweigan can lease them?

I'm sure Lufthansa or Emirates would want these

Wow this is crazy, if they intend to use them I can only imagine they go for LHR/JFK but that still doesn’t make much sense 3x weekly. Has anyone reported what the timings on those slots are?

@Lukas

No they are cutting Stockholm and Copenhagen. Oslo still remains and is possibly getting more routes. Going hub and spoke in the Nordics, with OSL as the hub.

This makes literally zero sense they have no hope of ever making money on these out of Heathrow. This seems like they are sealing their own fate and are going out with a big, expensive and above all pointless bang

Thinking long term I believe BA would rather allow Virgin's massive expansion than allow budget competitors into "fortress Heathrow". Think about I believe BA have accepted that with runway 3 they are going to have new competitors but they'd prefer it to be Virgin instead of budget competitors such as Norwegian and easyJet. If anything this whole Norwegian situation could work in their favour. They could paint it as budget doesn't work at Heathrow.

This is not going to work for Norwegian. AT. ALL

@Catriona

no, larger aircraft or long haul routes don't get priority landing.

Perhaps Norwegian is looking to use these slots for short haul flights intra Europe for example from Oslo to LHR. Not sure if this makes sense based on the cost of the slots and only operating 1 flight 3X weekly, but perhaps they feel they can cater to more business travelers as well as pickup additional leisure travelers who would prefer to fly to LHR over LGW.

I really wish you had said “slottery” 😉

Now that they were granted these 6 slots out of LHR (for free). Does that mean that they can't sell them and make a profit out of them?

For those who know airline history and the history of slots at LHR. You grab what you can and then trade, move around (you nudge) and or lease.

You start with what you can. There is always a bigger plan.

Look up VS and what they did to grab slot pairs, one at a time to slowly move services one by one to LHR....a decades long process. DL and CO are two prime examples of going from nothing. It was bit by bit until they could close LGW. Not saying DY will close LGW, but LHR is important.

No different that what has and continues to take place at HND in Tokyo.

@Lukas - This is why news gets turned into garbage. NOT OSL smh!!

2 Norwegian crew have said it's to operate MCO

I have no idea the validity of their comment.

@mkcol
MCO would make sense, Virgin and BA don't fly LHR to MCO direct, and with only 3 weekly flights, a leisure destination would be ideal. I saw Virgin's Orlando 747 recently, it's livery is totally decked out in a Star Wars theme for the new area in Disney, but it looks like it goes to Gatwick.

@Zip Silver That 747 (& I think all of them) rotate between LGW & MAN

If it is indeed MCO, that would be great since every airline flying to London (which there are quite a few flights to) are to LGW. A LHR-MCO would definitely help Norwegian take some more market share. I've seen up to 3 Virgin 747 flights from LGW and 2 BA 777's in the summer peak time. I'm pretty sure London is MCO's largest international destination (and 2nd largest overall, next to NYC).

Somebody upthread mentioned that the slot pairs have to be used for two seasons and then can be sold. This could make the LHR-MCO flight a reasonable risk: They can try it, and there's a valuable backstop if it doesn't work out.

It's too bad they're axing the direct flights to the nordics: from the west coast, the only nonstop to ARN will be missed.

My guess:

1) W pattern like LGW-JFK-LHR-JFK-LGW - not sure what they would need in LHR besides 3rd party services. If staff is based in LGW, all it needs is a shuttle to bring them to and pick them up from LHR - or is that pieced together too simple?

or

2) use it intra-european until they get lucky again or a 3rd runway opens.

@eurojoe

i hadn't thought of a routing like that

LGW - JFK/MCO - LHR - JFK/MCO - LGW

it could work well for them

Are there any flights at all from MCO to ARN that does NOT stop in London? I can't get my money back since I was so foolish to keep my ticket as points + a 20% bonus instead of getting my money back.
I fly with a dog and can not land in London, so my money is a loss