London Gatwick-N America: Norwegian Air still leads, but growth pauses

On 2-Jul-2019 Norwegian celebrated the fifth anniversary of its long haul operations from London Gatwick (LGW) to North America. The airline has now carried almost 5 million passengers on this part of its network since launching LGW to Los Angeles, followed in the same week of Jul-2014 by New York JFK and Fort Lauderdale launches.

In that time, Norwegian has overtaken Virgin Atlantic, British Airways and Air Transat (and stayed ahead of new entrant WestJet) to become easily the leading airline from LGW to North America.

In the week of 8-Jul-2013, the summer before Norwegian's entry, there were 11 LGW-North America routes and no LCC operators (source: OAG). In Jul-2019 there are 22 routes, of which 17 have low cost airlines (11 for Norwegian and six for WestJet).

After a near tripling of annual seat capacity in the LGW-North America market between 2013 and 2018, growth is reversing slightly this year as Norwegian pauses, Virgin Atlantic cuts back (it withdrew from LGW-Las Vegas in Mar-2019), and other leading operators tread water. Nevertheless, this market now has strong roots and should continue to flourish.