Norwegian launches new flight between Budapest and Gatwick
22-Oct-2013 Budapest Airport welcomes the announcement by Norwegian Air Shuttle to launch three flights a week between Budapest and London Gatwick Airport. This takes the number of cities directly accessible from the Hungarian capital with the Norwegian low cost carrier to five. The new service will be launched as of the next summer schedule, from 30 March 2014, with tickets already available through Norwegian's booking system.
Norwegian Air Shuttle has announced new flights to be launched as of the next summer schedule season, at a press conference held in London. Amongst other services, as of the spring of 2014, the low cost carrier will fly three times a week between Gatwick Airport and Budapest. The new flight will land in the Hungarian capital on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons at 14:45, before leaving for London at 15:15, with a turnaround time of 30 minutes. On Sundays, it will arrive half an hour later, at 15:15, and depart at 15:45.
Norwegian's last announcement of a new flight from Budapest came in December 2012, which saw Helsinki added to their existing destinations of Stockholm, Oslo and Copenhagen, as of this summer. Currently, the low cost carrier operates 24 times a week between Budapest and Northern Europe, which will increase to nearly thirty after the launch of the new London-Gatwick service. Tickets for the new flight are already available through Norwegian's booking system, starting from a promotional price of 29.90 GBP (approximately 10 500 HUF).
"We welcome the announcement from Norwegian about their new London Gatwick-Budapest flight, which takes the total number of their routes from Budapest to five, with London complementing their services to Copenhagen, Oslo, Stockholm and Helsinki. Today's announcement shows once again that there is still considerable demand between Budapest and London, and the new Gatwick service by Norwegian will provide more options for passengers when selecting their airline of choice to the four London airports," commented Kam Jandu, chief commercial officer for Budapest Airport. "As Norwegian are one of the fastest growing airlines at Budapest Airport and in Europe, we have no doubt that this new route will soon become as successful as all services connecting the Hungarian and English capitals," he added.
Although Norwegian operates as a low cost carrier, it offers a number of services on its flights which are unusual in the low cost segment. For example, it was the first in Europe to introduce a wireless broadband internet (WiFi) service on board its aircraft. It is also noteworthy that in addition to its fleet of narrow-body regional aircraft (Boeing 737s), it has purchased three brand new intercontinental Boeing 787 Dreamliners to fly its long haul routes launched this year, including from Oslo and Stockholm to New York and Bangkok.