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Wow, another entry into the low-cost trans-Atlantic fare wars to the U.S.?
Yes, WOW Air, that is.
Iceland-based WOW is jumping into the fray of low-cost European carriers trying their hand at flights to the U.S. by starting service this spring.
WOW is offering fares as little as €149 one-way ($171 in U.S currency) for flights that will begin in March from London's Gatwick airport to Boston; in June from Gatwick to Washington, D.C.; and in October from Dublin, Ireland to Boston and Washington, although that flight will include a two-hour layover in WOW's home hub in Reykjavik, Iceland.
(Not a bad deal, by the way, if you extend your time in Reykjavik. For the uninitiated, Iceland and Greenland are the opposites of what their names suggest. Iceland? Gorgeous. Greenland? Not so much.)
"Iceland as a hub is truly unique," Skuli Mogensen, founder and sole owner of WOW Air, told the Irish Independent. "It allows me to use narrow-body aircraft. They have fewer seats, are a lot less expensive to acquire and operate. I don't have the operational risk of having 350 seats."
Mogensen is the Icelandic Richard Branson, a dynamic businessman hell-bent on causing disruption on the marketplace. He said he wanted to create affordable travel to the U.S. for everybody, and the fares will certainly appeal more to leisure travelers than business passengers who likely won't have the time for a two-hour layover in Reykjavik - not to mention the added time of flying north to Iceland from Dublin to then go east to the United States.
WOW's flights from Dublin to the U.S. via Iceland will run three days a week to Logan International in Boston and Baltimore-Washington International.
The Independent newspaper noted that WOW is banking on the continued increase in tourism from Dublin to the U.S., which was up 14 percent last year compared to 2013.
WOW is comparable to Spirit Airlines in the U.S., with passengers paying for everything from baggage fees to bottles of water.
"My hope is that we will see strong point to point traffic (between Dublin and Reykjavik) during the summer and autumn," Mogensen told the paper.
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