From this month, Norway’s budget airline Norwegian will take on low-cost giants like easyJet, Ryanair and Thomson Airways in the battle to ferry British tourists to the summer holiday playgrounds of the Canary Islands and the Spanish Costa regions.
The Nordic carrier is launching 12 new routes in and out of Gatwick, and will base three aircraft at the London airport, allowing for quicker turn-around times and more frequent services to destinations in southern Europe and the Adriatic.
These direct flight options will include regular services to three of the Canary Islands—Lanzarote, Gran Canaria and Tenerife—as well as the main Balearic outcrop of Mallorca.
Three key cities on the Spanish mainland—the holiday gateways of Malaga, Alicante and Barcelona—feature on the list, along with the Portuguese sunspot of Faro, in the Algarve.
The Croatian coastal enclaves of Dubrovnik and Split will also receive Norwegian services from Gatwick, with the Italian capital Rome, the elegant French retreat of Nice and the far-northern Norwegian outpost of Tromso rounding out the airborne dozen.
Norwegian is increasingly a major player in the European market at Gatwick.
In 2009, its number of weekly flights from the airport stood at 198, but by the end of this summer, that figure will have been boosted to 320. In January 2012, it announced Europe’s largest ever mass aircraft purchase, ordering 122 Boeing 737 aircraft as part of a significant expansion.
Bjorn Kjos, the CEO of Norwegian, states that ‘We are very happy with the relationship we have had with Gatwick since we moved all our London routes to the airport.’
‘By establishing a base in London, Norwegian will be positioned to meet future competition on short-haul routes within Europe.’
