Norwegian acquires fellow Norwegian airline Widerøe

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• omicron says:

  8 Jul8 July 05:22

  With SAS looking at a potential bankruptcy at the moment I’m not sure the deal will be approved, as that could potentially leave domestic flights in Norway without any competition at all (depending on who ends up taking over what’s left of SAS and what they do with it). I also frequently fly London-Bergen, a route that’s currently only served by Wideroe and Norwegian, so hoping to keep some competition in the game.

  • JDB says:

    8 Jul8 July 07:35

    It’s not ‘potential” – SAS is currently in bankruptcy, having filed a year ago and if it can raise the necessary equity (which is likely), on track to emerge from the process in the autumn.

    • Qrfan says:

      8 Jul8 July 08:01

      Omicron is stuck in 2021… ;⁠)

• Bagoly says:

  8 Jul8 July 08:09

  Why would Sixt close T5 if they open in T2?
  On a given journey, they are hardly substitutes – the whole point of both is to avoid having to take the shuttle ‘bus,

  • roberto says:

    8 Jul8 July 08:18

    I have a sixt T5 drop off together with a Soiftel overnight and an early morning BA flight next month. If it means I now have to faff about and go to T2 I won’t be best pleased.

    I stopped using Avis and flipped to Sixt when Avis pulled out of T5 a couple of years back. The T5 drop off is a great option for me however I can appreciate its going to be expensive for Sixt to maintain a base there when Avis realised they would be better off elsewhere.

    • Save East Coast Rewards says:

      8 Jul8 July 09:06

      It’s easy enough to see. I did a dummy booking for October and there’s the T2 option and the T5 option. If you select T4 it currently shows T5 plus a shuttle (with limited hours due to covid apparently!) so it looks like this is an improvement not a change

• David S says:

  8 Jul8 July 09:41

  I have tried 3 times to get airline points with Sixt. I put my details on the booking, nothing posted. The previous time I tried using their online functionality for post rental credits and it didn’t work (even after what must have been 50 tries over a week and trying two different airline loyalty schemes). The very first time, I asked their Customer Services to do it for me and whilst they said they had done it, nothing ever posted…..so I gave up using them

  • Peter says:

    8 Jul8 July 11:45

    In my experience, Avis customer service is much worse than Sixt. Their “German speaking” customer service consists of ladies with Spanish names Google translating prefabricated text chunks into German, and sending them out whether they make sense in the given situation or not. Only Royal Air Maroc customer service is worse still, but not by much

• s879 says:

  8 Jul8 July 10:03

  I live about 25 minutes from Heathrow. Can anyone advise which company usually offers best deals for car rentals? I know people used to mention a Australian site. Please advise as I need it for a week this month. I know it will depend on availability but if there is a code or deal that often works, that would be a good starting point for me.
  Thanks.

  • tony says:

    8 Jul8 July 10:51

    Kayak is good, as it will show Heathrow as well as nearby locations across multiple rental agencies and bookers (so the same car booked through Expedia might be half the price of booking direct). I think the Australia point might be the idea where you tell Hertz (IIRC) that you are from Australia and the price tumbles. Sometimes.

  • Nate1309 says:

    8 Jul8 July 11:30

    Costco travel can be good value for car hire

  • Rob says:

    8 Jul8 July 11:32

    Hertz Australia used to be crazy cheap, esp with the Amex Plat code, but those days are gone.

    • Danny says:

      8 Jul8 July 13:24

      Hertz Australia can sometimes still be much cheaper, and saved me a couple of hundred quid on a recent UK rental. But it is less consistently cheaper than in the past. You can also try Hertz South American countries (pretty much any of them will do) for cheap rates.

      • Chrisasaurus says:

        8 Jul8 July 14:21

        Anyone ever find a way to get your Hertz Gold number in a booking done on another site?

        When you log in you come back to the GB site and you can’t seem to add restrospectively

  • Nick says:

    8 Jul8 July 11:42

    There’s plenty of comparison sites you can use if you care mainly about price. Many of the hire companies are together on the north side of the airport so location doesn’t matter. I’ll be honest though and say it’s the one thing I never compare because so many in the market are cowboys. Always Enterprise for me, the only difference is whether I collect at Heathrow itself or in Slough if it’s a significant price difference.

    • Chrisasaurus says:

      8 Jul8 July 14:20

      Slough? That’s a bit of a shlep?

      • Nick says:

        8 Jul8 July 15:46

        It’s 20 mins on the bus from Heathrow. Don’t often do it but if I have a few hours to kill and it saves £100+ then I don’t mind. Usually it only applies around bank holidays though, when there aren’t any business bookings, most of the time I do use the heathrow office.

        • Nick says:

          8 Jul8 July 15:47

          P.S. the main point I was making is that I’d prefer to go to Slough than use Hertz, Europcar, or any of the other cowboys.

• The real Swiss Tony says:

  8 Jul8 July 16:56

  I find it genuinely funny when people say “global hire company XYZ is a scam”. My experience has been that when it goes wrong, it’s a colossal nightmare, be that with Avis (2 scratched alloys, reported at collection, charged £1600, took a chargeback to resolve), Hertz (given a smaller car than I had paid for, refused a refund when I realised because I had accepted the vehicle, AMEX had to intervene), Europcar (accused me of stealing a parcel shelf which was never in the car to start with, took me to threaten to call the police before they grew up) or Enterprise (stone chip in windscreen, withheld £1k on my credit card for about 10 weeks before sending me the final bill, which my insurer settled in 72hrs).

  Even the good ones are as bad as each other, and that’s before you get down to the Goldcar level of scuzz. But if you think someone can rent you a car for £5 a day without making back the money somewhere else, then fool you….

  • CamFlyer says:

    8 Jul8 July 18:12

    Fwiw, I have rented with Sixt, Hertz and European in recent years. I tend to be most comfortable with the first two, having been double charged by Europcar on one rental (due to having booked through Expedia, who never transferred the payment to Europcar; even the credit card dispute was denied by Visa, as I had authorised payment to Expedia), and on the other the infant car seat they provided was barely fit for use. Issues with Hertz are more being ‘upgraded’ from a standard brand SUV into a ‘premium’ Audi sedan. Franchised Hertz locations (Cyprus, Palma?) are more hit or miss; in the US they’re excellent and I don’t use anyone else.

    • CamFlyer says:

      8 Jul8 July 18:14

      And I won’t use Enterprise, after numerous bad experiences with Enterprise Car Club.

    • tony says:

      8 Jul8 July 21:41

      I feel that car hire in the US and Canada is just a different business model altogether. Never had a problem over there with any of the majors. They understand cars will face wear and tear. That’s factored into the price and the whole process is used to help control 2nd hand car prices. Indeed I’m sure Ford and GM were historically massive shareholders in Avis & Hertz. In Europe however it’s the additional insurance and punitive charges for damage that allow them to make money.

      Return a car in the US, all they want to check is the mileage, that it still has 4 wheels and that it’s full of gas.

  • Londonsteve says:

    11 Jul11 July 00:34

    I agree. Car rental can be a minefield and very high post-pandemic prices prompted myself and many others to look for other solutions. In Europe at least, many will have discovered the low cost joys of some excellent rail networks with the likes of Bolt and Uber stitching together the missing bits. All at lower cost than car rental + fuel + road tolls + fines + grey hairs from the stress of dealing with most car rental firms. If I really wanted to visit a location in Europe where car rental is indispensible for touring, I’d rather drive there in my own car even if it’s a bit dearer than flight + car rental.

• s879 says:

  8 Jul8 July 21:33

  Thank you all, very useful points.

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