Last week I wrote about the possibility that WOW Air is exploring an entry into the Indian markets, hence becoming perhaps the cheapest option to fly out of India to the USA. WOW Air is supposed to be hosting a press conference tomorrow in Delhi to discuss their plans for the Indian market.
However, ahead of the press conference, we already have confirmation that the Reykjavik – Delhi flight is a done deal. The airline is going to launch this route with an A330-300 aircraft from December 6, 2018, onwards. Initially, the service will operate 3X weekly, and then go up to 5 times a week in January 2019. As per AirlineRoutes.net,
WW322 KEF1145 – 0315+1DEL 330
WW323 DEL0700 – 1320KEF 33006DEC18 – 22DEC18 Day 246 (Day 357 from DEL)
27DEC18 – 05JAN19 Day 346 (Day 457 from DEL)
eff 07JAN19 Day x57 (Day x16 from DEL)
Easy connections to the USA
Like you see, the flights are all timed to arrive from Delhi to Reykjavik at 1:20 PM every afternoon. This is a sweet spot of timing to connect, because of the whole of the USA bank of WOW Air flights take off between 3 and 4 pm, which means you could be headed to any of the 14 airports in the USA they fly to at your convenience. For example, I checked out a few destinations
- 3 pm to Chicago
- 3:50 pm to Boston
- 3:30 pm to Washington DC
On the return from the USA, however, it becomes slightly tricky. The USA bank of flights arrives into Reykjavik at about 5 AM in the morning, and the flights to Delhi are scheduled for 11:45 AM. That means about 6 hours of transit time in Reykjavik.
I am hoping that should be a good enough time to grab a reindeer meat burger before getting on the flight home.
I know the question on everyone’s mind would be how low is good enough and if the ME3 will drop their prices to ensure their bastion on this route is not compromised. However, my hope is everyone will understand that different airlines serve different needs, and perhaps will be willing to shell that 100-200$ more if he or she wants better food, IFE on board and more frequencies.
Of course, there are a lot of other airlines targetting the connections space as well, including the Chinese carriers and the Eastern Europe ones such as Ukraine Air which just launched Delhi flights.
Bottomline
I am not on the fence about trying out WOW Air, even if it is to report back to all of you about how the process goes. They operate on an eight across configuration and also have some extra legroom seats up for sale.
What do you think of WOW Air? Have you flown them before? Do share your experience if you have.
Any idea what visa requirements are for Indians in Iceland? In the event they get stranded.
Am sure most Indians are looking forward to having a reindeer meat burger during their Layover 😉
Instead of Delhi, Mumbai they need to target Tier-II airports such as Amritsar in Punjab. Middle eastern carriers such as Qatar, Emirates are successful as they connect many other airports in India with easy connections in Doha and Dubai. If WOW air CEO wishes to develop Iceland similar to Dubai hub for Emirates and Doha hub for Qatar, they need to look at Amritsar that can connect half a million population of Punjabis in Toronto area and big numbers in San Francisco, New York, other cities which will give them one-stop connection to Punjab from North America. With Delhi, they are going to compete with many other carriers.
I am not really sure of the viability after seeing the schedule. Spending 6 hours in transit on the return leg mitigates any time saving from the geographical route. Frankly, they would have to offer a super low fare (over 40% cheaper with bags from the next alternative) to convince me to put up with the lack of on-board amenities, lack of daily connectivity and a 6 hour layover after a short red-eye to Rejavik.
Boston will be advantageous because Air India already have daily flights to Chicago O’HARE and 3 weekly flights to Washington DC. Apart from that Air India is earning good revenue from 9 weekly flights to San Francisco.They also have plans to start flights to Los Angeles.