WOW air launches £99 flights from London to the USA
New transatlantic routes from WOW air for under £100 per person!
Low-cost Icelandic airline, WOW air, has launched two new transatlantic routes departing from London to Boston and Washington DC.
The carrier will be taking passengers from London Gatwick to Boston Logan International from 27th March 2015, or Baltimore Washington International from 4th June 2015, via a short stop-off at Keflavik airport in Iceland’s capital Reykjavik.
To celebrate its entry into the transatlantic market, WOW air is offering one-way tickets from just £99 per person.
The £99 seats
The £99 seats available online include taxes, but you’ll have to pay a £7 booking fee on top as well as a 2% fee if you pay by credit card.
Each passenger is allowed to take one piece of hand luggage weighing up to 5kg free, but checking in a 20kg bag to put in the hold will cost an extra £39 per person, per flight.
As is common with budget airlines there are also extra charges to reserve your seat (£2-£8 online), reserve a seat with extra leg room (£14), if you want food or want to change the details of the flight.
But if you can pack light and bring a snack it’s a pretty cheap way to get to North America.
Unfortunately, the first batch of introductory offer tickets sold out within hours.
But WOW air says it will continue to make £99 seats available, with a new allocation already planned for travel from September 2015 and October 2015.
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The new routes
The layover in Reykjavik means the new flights will take longer than going direct with another airline like British Airways.
WOW air’s London to Boston route will take around three hours longer than a direct flight on the way there and over five hours more on the way back
Meanwhile the airline's London to Washington route will take around two hours longer than a direct flight on the way there and over four hours more on the way back.
There will be one flight a day from London to Boston via Reykjavik, five days a week (Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and Sundays) and one flight a day from London to Washington DC via Reykjavik four days a week (Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays).
Passengers will travel in Wow air’s existing Airbus A320 family aircraft for the first leg of their journey between London Gatwick and Keflavik airport in Reykjavik. But the flights from Reykjavik to the USA will be operated using brand new Airbus A321 Extended Range aircraft.
How WOW air compares
The cheapest one-way flight from London to Boston I could find at the time of writing (using flight comparison site Kayak) for travel on 25th September 2015, was £337 with Icelandair, including one stop in Reykjavik and 23kg of baggage.
WOW air in comparison was offering a one-way flight for £198.67 with taxes and booking fee on the same date. That’s nearly £140 cheaper, or £100 cheaper if you want to include a 20KG bag. But should more allocation for £99 seats come out, you could save £200!
Of course this is not a definitive comparison. Prices can vary wildly on flights and adjusting dates, times and baggage allowances can significantly alter what you pay.
But as it stands WOW air is certainly turning up the heat on competition for low-cost transatlantic travel and should definitely be a name to check out when trying to find an affordable flight across the pond.
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Transforming transatlantic travel
The cost of transatlantic travel is starting to get more affordable.
In June Norwegian, another low-cost airline, announced it would offer flights from London to New York, Los Angeles and Fort Lauderdale from just £149 per person.
Now WOW air has bettered the price of crossing the Atlantic by £50.
Skuli Mogensen, CEO of WOW air, said the new flights were just the beginning of the airline’s plans to transform low-cost transatlantic travel and open up the market to those who may not have been able to afford it previously.
Mogensen added: “The low-cost airline market is scrambling to offer cheap flights to North America and I’m happy that we‘ll be among the first to do so and at a price point that will no doubt cause our rivals to re-evaluate their plans.”
For more ideas on how to save money on your next trip read: How to get a cheap flight.
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