Low-cost flying to the USA may be coming sooner than we expected. WOW Air, the fast-growing Icelanding Low-Cost Carrier, is rumoured to be imminently announcing the launch of flights between Delhi and Reykjavík in the coming few days. The airline is very interested in connecting India to the US with their low-cost model.
Last year, WOW Air had confirmed their intention to launch flights to Asia when they will add their A330-900 neo aircraft later in 2018. They have 4 of these on order, and their first A330neo was indeed on the Airbus Final Assembly Line in April 2018.
WOW currently gets a ton of transatlantic transfer traffic, bringing America to Europe and vice-versa through their Reykjavík hub.
India-US has been a huge focus market for almost everyone who flies from India. Air India has a slew of non-stops between India and various ports in the USA. United has a couple of non-stop flights to Newark as well. And Emirates built a fortune on transferring Indian passengers to the Western world. About 4 million members of the Indian diaspora live in the USA, which is a large market to target for anyone who wants to be in the value end of the market. Do not forget the tourism aspect of it.
WOWAir is scheduled to hold a press conference in Delhi on May 15, so it may very well be them announcing their launch of service on that day between this city pair.
Bottomline
While IndiGo and SpiceJet are still at the planning stage, and IndiGo has received some approvals for long-haul flying, but no planes yet, WOW Air is most probably moving ahead on their plans to connect India and Americas via Iceland together.
Would you fly low-cost long haul? I sure don’t mind trying them if tickets were ultra-cheap!
Good news only if prices are set right, something like 35K including all charges for DEL-US return trip. They will not survive this route for long though.
This looks an amazing news to me.. I used them for a flight from Paris to Iceland, seats were bigger than our international flight from Mumbai to Paris on Jet airways, service was good, Pizza was available for purchase, landed a whooping 40 mins early for 3 hrs duration flight. However, it was similar price to Icelandic air which is a full carrier after adding baggage cost..
Delhi KEF is approximately 9.5 hours and kef to nyc is approx 5.5 hours meaning a very direct and convenient routing- I like the idea of getting an extra 1.5 hours of shut eye on the red eye from India and then looking forward to a short 5 hour day hop to nyc. The question is how much of a price advantage will they be actually able to offer to get service demanding Indian passengers to forgo the creature comforts and accept their “minimalist” product.
While Wow can significantly undercut legacy European and American carriers, it will struggle to retain the same cost base advantage with Gulf carriers that operate in lower cost economies and operate ultra-fuel efficient aircrafts.
While transatlantic routes have some of the highest yields (fares) in the world, India US would among the world’s lowest yielding markets- American had to pull of its delhi chicago route inspite of having load factors over 90% as they simply coiod not turn a profit given the fares on the route. An economy return flight from London to New York runs at about 800 pounds which is roughly the same as a flight from New Delhi to New York (more then twice the distance).
To get Indians to even consider switching to Wow, they would need to consistently offer fares max 45k for a Delhi NYC return trip. Even at that price, some may question their value proposition given extras such as baggage and meals- Indians rarely travel light! 😉 The question is whether it is possible for any carrier to sustain this price- particularly if the fuel prices go up?
I would absolutely fly longhaul with WOW for the right price, to the right destination (which Delhi is, FTR). My “right price” has to include positioning flights, but the potential for a stopover in Reykjavik mitigates this somewhat.
This is certainly a wonderful news… keeping fingers crossed!