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£275 economy flights to the USA are back for the first time since the pandemic

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We have been saying for a few weeks now that there are definite signs of nervousness in the travel industry about forward flight bookings after the Summer 2023 peak has passed.

We saw it in the British Airways and Virgin Atlantic sales, with business class tickets to the USA back around the £1,300 mark. JetBlue has been offering sub-£1,300 business class from Gatwick to the US for some time now, for Autumn travel.

Yesterday we covered an SAS flash sale offering £1,225 business class flights to New York which did NOT require a Saturday night stay.

Down at the back of the aircraft, we now have the return of sub-£300 flights to the US East Coast.

Norse Atlantic, the low cost carrier operating out of London Gatwick, has launched a sale to celebrate one year of transatlantic flying.

Here are the headline fares, which are lower than anything we have seen for a long time:

  • London Gatwick to Boston from £275 return
  • London Gatwick to New York JFK from £295 return
  • London Gatwick to Washington DC from £309 return
  • London Gatwick to Miami from £319 return
  • London Gatwick to Orlando from £319 return
  • London Gatwick to San Francisco from £335 return
  • London Gatwick to Barbados from £349 return
  • London Gatwick to Los Angeles from £365 return
  • London Gatwick to Montego Bay from £419 return
  • London Gatwick to Kingston from £419 return

The good news ….

…. is that these fares are easy to find. In fact, they are a little lower than the headline numbers above.

I had no trouble finding New York at £289 return for September.

The bad news ….

…. is that Norse is a true low cost carrier, in the Ryanair mould.

£289 gets you a seat and a SMALL underseat bag. That’s it.

You do NOT get:

Here is evidence from my last Norse Atlantic trip that – if you refuse to pay – you are likely to be given the worst seat available even if the cabin is empty:

The lack of luggage allowance is the biggest issue. For a short weekend break in New York or Boston I think most people could actually manage with a small underseat bag, assuming handbags are left at home.

Clearly if you’re heading to Barbados for a week then the costs are going to add up – you’re going to want to eat on the way, you will have a suitcase, you may want to ensure you have decent seats. You’re probably into British Airways or Virgin Atlantic pricing territory by that point and they may have better flight times or more resilience if your aircraft develops issues.

Why you should fly Premium instead

The real bargain with Norse Atlantic is its Premium cabin. Pound for pound, this is the best value premium product in the air, at least flying from the UK.

Do you know that Norse’s Premium seat has EIGHT extra inches of pitch vs BA and Virgin Atlantic? Here is our comparison of the Norse Atlantic premium seat vs British Airways World Traveller Plus and Virgin Atlantic Premium.

Rhys reviewed Norse Atlantic’s Premium seat to the US here.

You can have a look around the sale fares on the Norse Atlantic website here. The promotion is running for a week.

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Comments (54)

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

  • Paul says:
    14 Jun14 June 11:26

    Good news for passengers but I think it will be a while yet before sanity returns to some BA pricing. As an example I was looking at a flight to FRA last Saturday and to my utter astonishment BA wanted £979 one way last Saturday. Some fares around Europe even in September are extraordinary. For example it is entirely possible to for two passengers to pay £2430 return to ATH in economy

    • Chris W says:
      14 Jun14 June 11:32

      Winter mid-week return fares to New York on BA (with Sat stay) are as low as £385 which is only slightly higher than before the pandemic.

      I agree pricing for this summer is all over the place but it should settle by September.

    • meta says:
      14 Jun14 June 11:37

      Of course if you book for the same day flight the ticket will be high. Book two weeks in advance like I did for Frankfurt recently and the cost was sub-£100 one-way.

      • Rob says:
        14 Jun14 June 11:42

        I was looking at Hamburg last night for late July and you will pay £400 one-way in Economy on a Saturday.

        • meta says:
          14 Jun14 June 13:39

          Yes, if you fly to Hamburg on Saturday 29th July it’s £466, but fly on a Friday 28th it’s £166 or Wednesday 26th £68. You can’t complain about the prices if you only want to fly on a Saturday.

          • TGLoyalty says:
            14 Jun14 June 22:49

            Thats just your standard supply and demand at work .. like you say little bit of flexibility you can find bargains

      • Paul says:
        14 Jun14 June 12:37

        It was 2 weeks in advance and the ATH example is 3 months away. I think we all know that you can get good value but there is also some extraordinary high fares out there

        • meta says:
          14 Jun14 June 13:42

          Fares have always been extraordinarily high during peak periods. It’s just that our perception is skewed because we have been spoilt by extraordinarily low prices during pandemic and immediately after.

    • Will says:
      14 Jun14 June 21:16

      I paid £1400 for 2 ppl + infant 1 way from faro economy the week after Easter.

      Still can’t believe I paid it, was convinced an avios seat or 2 would pop up.

      Bagged a business ticket on avios for me but couldn’t get family back. Bloke sat next to them in economy was quite pleased when I said here’s my business ticket can we swap?

  • Chris W says:
    14 Jun14 June 11:30

    I think ‘nervousness’ is the wrong way to frame it. That suggests it’s something bad or wrong. Ita a combination of:
    – Inflation/cost of living crisis. Travel is a discretionary luxury that some are choosing to spend less on
    – Exchange rates. The US is more expensive to visit than it used to be.
    – Completion of post-pandemic trips. If people had desperately wanted to do a trip during the pandemic, they’ve probably now done it.

    Norse reducing the cost of flights to New York by 50 pounds isn’t going to sway many travellers when you factor in how expensive the destination is. You’re either going to splurge (and probably choose a full-service airline where you don’t have to faff with all the add-on charges), or skip the trip completely this year,

    • WaynedP says:
      14 Jun14 June 12:21

      Agree with all of the above.

      There’s still a significant market though among folk with family in USA, who:
      -won’t be facing same level of accommodation & meal costs confronting the purely leisure tourist,
      -are more price sensitive than the purely leisure tourist,
      -have already had one post-covid visit back to the USA, and
      -are probably not considering another trip stateside in the next 12-16 months.

      My daughter and her significant other fall into exactly this category, and offers like this might be designed to tempt folk like them into reconsidering their “no USA flights planned for the foreseable”.
      And it might just succeed too. They have decent jobs with ample annual leave and are mortgage-free. I’ve sent her this article, and we shall see.

      Like I was at her age, she and BF are not tied into any loyalty scheme and are happy to seek out cheapest fares on any airline that entices them.

      The middle-class, mortgage-paying leisure traveller is likely to come under most pressure to ditch or materially curtail discretionary, luxury items like foreign travel given reports of how many millions of households will fall off their fixed rate mortgage deals over the course of 2023 and 2024, and will potentially face trebling, quadrupling or worse of their monthly mortgage payments.

    • Ian M says:
      14 Jun14 June 15:20

      The current exchange rate should be increasing demand for seats. The strength of the dollar makes the UK a relatively cheap place to visit for Americans

    • dougzz99 says:
      14 Jun14 June 15:49

      Not wishing to labour the point but the high cost of things in the USA is not the exchange rate, it’s the US$ price, all about US inflation. $100 at 1.4 is £71.50 as opposed to £80 at 1.25. The problem is that $100 was $70 pre-pandemic.
      In 2018 the average £-$ was 1.33 and in 2019 1.28.
      Forget about the exchange rate that’s not the problem.

    • Will says:
      14 Jun14 June 21:22

      I think it’s wishful thinking if people genuinely believe we can have a pandemic followed by a boom then return to normality.

      Most likely there’s some crazy economic conditions about to manifest and the current inflation / interest rate situation is the tip of the iceburg.

      Are we really all signing up to pandemic, print money, houses up 20+% and full employment.

      If so we should periodically shut the economy down and pay people not to attend work.

      We didn’t exactly enter the pandemic in a stable place, high debt, ultra low interest rates, high asset prices, bond boom.

    • Rick says:
      15 Jun15 June 00:17

      I blame Beyoncé 🙂

      • Track says:
        15 Jun15 June 16:57

        They do blame her for an uptick in Swedish inflation!

        After all, the her tour expected to earn 2 billion by September, BBC said.

  • Richmond_Surrey says:
    14 Jun14 June 11:55

    I would not risk flying Norse unless it was almost free. No proper hand baggage is a deal breaker and I prefer to pay more for airline which will accommodate me in case of disruptions and cancellations.

    • Rob says:
      14 Jun14 June 12:00

      You can pay for it, it’s not banned!

      • Richmond_Surrey says:
        15 Jun15 June 08:21

        But then it’s not cheap any more, so what’s the point?
        It’s like Wizzair which is more expensive than British Airways when you add proper hand baggage.

  • Andrew. says:
    14 Jun14 June 12:10

    The underseat bag / personal item is 45 x 36 x 22 cm.

    It’s not that bad if you are careful in selecting your luggage. The standard carry on for a Virgin flight is 56 x 36 x 23cm, so if you choose a bag that has two or no wheels rather than four spinners you’ve probably only lost 4cm of capacity.

    I’ve done 10 days in New England with a 55x35x22cm bag and a bold capsule for the hotel laundry, the underseat bag would be fine for a 4 day weekend in fine weather.

    There’s always a Marshalls or TJ Maxx somewhere nearby if you are desperately in need of emergency socks or underwear.

    • Qrfan says:
      14 Jun14 June 12:20

      Your holidays sound fun.

      • Rob says:
        14 Jun14 June 12:26

        I think if you actually look at how few clothes you wear in your average week in the UK you’d realise that you massively overpack for a holiday. There are people who go 2-3 days on the same shirt here who suddenly decide they need to pack seven for a week away ….

        • WaynedP says:
          14 Jun14 June 12:44

          How much would you charge for a 20 minute conversation with my wife, Rob ?

          No matter how frugally I pack for myself, I always find that I’m lugging around oversize luggage because my patriarchal upbringing forbids me from shrugging and saying “You’re on your own, my dear – go Girl Power !”

        • meta says:
          14 Jun14 June 13:46

          Ew, no wonder everyone smells so badly on the tube. 😂 I change minimum 2 shirts per day in summer.

        • GeoffreyB says:
          14 Jun14 June 15:00

          “There are people who go 2-3 days on the same shirt here ”

          Who are these disgusting scruffs?

        • Jody says:
          14 Jun14 June 15:30

          That’s pretty grim, especially in this weather!

        • dougzz99 says:
          14 Jun14 June 15:52

          I wouldn’t wear a shirt more than once but how hard is it to wash a few items.

        • Niall says:
          14 Jun14 June 16:30

          Completely agree with this. Since travelling more regularly, and after some baggage incidents/loss, I almost always do hand baggage only now. Sometimes I book a bag with BA for the Same day change (doesn’t apply to Hand bag only fares), but rarely for the bag. I also do wear a new shirt every day 😅. But even a bag smaller than those dimensions can fit a couple of pairs of shorts, socks, undies, T-shirts for every day. No queue waiting for your bags at the other side. It’s much more pleasant.

      • Andrew. says:
        14 Jun14 June 12:31

        They are!

        We paid £340 for our return flights to Boston on that trip from Edinburgh.

        One night Boston, ferry to Provincetown for two nights, Bus to Hyannis for two nights, Bus to Providence for two nights, Amtrak to New Haven for two nights, then Amtrak back to Boston for a night.

        Too much luggage is a burden when you are on the move.

    • Blair Waldorf Salad says:
      14 Jun14 June 12:22

      Plus all the things you’d need to pack in that small bag to make Norse travel tolerable. NC headphones, neck pillow, snacks and drinks, etc.

      • Andrew. says:
        14 Jun14 June 12:34

        According to their website, everyone can also bring one airport shopping bag in addition to their ticket type allowance.

        So no problems with your Boots Meal deal.

    • Ian M says:
      14 Jun14 June 15:23

      The longest trip I’ve done with hand luggage is 4 and a half months. Hate travelling with a checked suitcase!

      • lumma says:
        15 Jun15 June 19:09

        There’s a big difference between full size hand luggage and just an under seat personal item though. You only get the small bag as standard on Norse

  • BajiNahid says:
    14 Jun14 June 12:23

    Jet Blue have fares in economy for £245 return to NYC and Boston Albeit, however a checked bag was included in the fare too!

  • Jake says:
    14 Jun14 June 12:59

    Rob- what’s your view on Norse and their chances of surviving.

    We continually hear from the legacy carriers that leisure passengers are prepared to pay for business or at least premium economy for long haul trips (think EK rolling it out on their fleet)

    How does that stack up against the super low cost approach. Is there really a market for low cost long haul?

    If there is, how does the airline make enough money to survive?

    • Rob says:
      14 Jun14 June 13:36

      They signed the leases on their planes at the bottom of the market and are allegedly paying peanuts. They haven’t refurbished them either. They are also not really cheap when you factor in food, baggage etc. They have spent nothing on IT as an attempt to book will show you – no app either. 787 is now reliable and they shouldn’t lose too much to EC261 or hiring last minute replacement aircraft.

      The issue is that BA could give away economy seats to the USA for free and still make money from the people in Club World and if necessary will do so if they get too troublesome.

      Breakeven cost is therefore low. Whether they can still sell enough seats per flight to hit that breakeven cost is a different matter.

      • Jake says:
        14 Jun14 June 15:30

        Interesting. The concern would be is that with wafer thin margins and a small amount of bad press it doesn’t take much to erode any profits.

        Also, when you consider all in costs it’s not much cheaper than legacy carriers.

        • dougzz99 says:
          14 Jun14 June 15:56

          Bad press! Ryanair thrived on bad press, when has one of the endless pieces on BA failure done them any real harm. At the back of the plane it’s all about price.

      • jjoohhnn says:
        14 Jun14 June 16:28

        Maybe they should refurbish them to reduce those extra 8 inches down. Even if they kept it larger than the competition they could get one extra PE row in, and that wouldn’t require any extra cabin crew on a full flight…

  • Nick says:
    14 Jun14 June 13:20

    Managed to get August travel LHR-BOS return, in BA First Class, at £2500 in the last sale, and IMHO, I’d expect similar, in their next sale?!

  • Nick says:
    14 Jun14 June 21:53

    But if you want to head to Asia, good luck getting anything under 4 digits.

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