"On a per-hour basis, this flight is cheaper than my apartment."
Travel is expensive: the taxi to the airport, the baggage check fees, the “surge priced” lattes at the Starbucks, and even the $18 GORP in Hudson News. But thanks to Norwegian Air, your plane ticket may soon become the cheapest part of your entire airport experience.
As reported by NBC News, Norwegian Air Shuttle’s CEO Bjørn Kjos announced that the company is considering offering one-way tickets for $69 from Westchester County Airport in New York and Bradley International Airport in Connecticut to Edinburgh, Scotland and Bergen, Norway as soon as 2017. And while the average round-trip price for these flights after taxes will likely be closer to $300, that is still a cheap-ass price for intercontinental air travel.
There are some obstacles to these $69 European flights, however. The airline has over a hundred 737 Max jets from Boeing on order, and the proposed airports would have to install customs stations to handle the international traffic, but according to The Guardian, Kjos is “confident this can be arranged.”
On a personal note, I flew Norwegian both to and from Europe this year, and I am very excited about this news. My ticket on Norwegian was at least a couple hundred dollars less expensive than the next best option, though I found it deeply troubling to pay $6 for a bottle of water on the plane, the in-flight entertainment left something to be desired (though I was glad to finally have the chance to watch The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen three times in a row), and the check-in desk at the Milan Airport was only slightly more organized than a hockey riot. But the flight was still comfortable enough, punctual, and (most importantly) cheap.
So until I can fly like Jennifer Aniston, I will continue to fly Norwegian. I may be miserable on the plane, but the fact that I’m jetting off to Europe for $69 is sure to make me slightly less miserable. According to taxifarefinder.com, it would cost me $77.86 just to take a taxi from my apartment to the airport. And last time I checked, taxis did not offer any in-car movie options, not even The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.
