Norse Atlantic to End Flights out of Berlin

DALLAS - Norse Atlantic Airways (N0) the latest European startup launching long-haul low-cost flights between European cities and America, is terminating all scheduled flights out of one of their bases, Berlin-Brandenburg Airport (BER), after progressively cutting off flights and reducing frequencies since its opening in August 2022.

On October 27, Norse will operate the last flight out of Berlin towards New York (JFK), leaving once again the capital of Germany without any long-haul airline based at their recently inaugurated €6.5bn airport.

The LHLC currently operates a well-sized route network serving ten destinations in the United States out of five hubs distributed across Europe, the largest of them being London-Gatwick Airport (LGW). London has recently expanded its destination list with new flights to the Caribbean and Thailand for the winter 2023 season.

Berlin, on the other hand, saw the first Norse inaugural flights depart to the US on August 17, 2022, including ambitious routes such as a three-weekly frequency to Los Angeles (LAX) and Fort Lauderdale (FLL), along with a daily service to New York-Kennedy (JFK), which is served as well from all the other hubs including London (LGW), Rome (FCO), Oslo (OSL) and Paris (CDG).

Today, flights to LAX and FLL have been stopped already, and the only remaining service to JFK has been reduced from daily to four weekly, departing BER at 19:05 on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and Sundays as N0601. This translates into a 69.2% of weekly seat offer reduction in less than one year of operations.

In less than a year, the presence of Norse in Berlin has dropped from 13 weekly departures to just four movements, expecting zero in November. Photo: Anikka Bauer/Flughafen Berlin Brandenburg

The Last Flight out of Berlin

Norse Atlantic Airways has not made any official announcement referring to the termination of flights out of Berlin-Brandenburg Airport. Despite this, the schedule of the last flight remaining to New York ends on October 27, 2023, arriving two days after on October 29. That will, presumably, be the last time a Norse aircraft will land at Berlin.

Additionally, the airline has not revealed any plans to discontinue the BER-JFK flight during the winter, switching it into a seasonal service. It has not been done also with the already extinct services to Fort Lauderdale and Los Angeles.

Passengers wanting to fly from Berlin to the U.S. will still have the possibility to travel on Norse by connecting onto any transatlantic flight leaving from any of their other hubs, thanks to the partnership signed with Spirit Airlines and EasyJet, Norwegian Air Shuttle, which allows the LHLC to expands its influence on more than 600 weekly connections across Europe and the United States.

The lack of a clearly based airline in Berlin has led to a diverse ecosystem where no carrier has clear dominance among others on both flights out of BER. Photo: Anikka Bauer/Flughafen Berlin Brandenburg

Berlin Lacking a Long-Haul Airline, Again

It may be a coincidence, bad luck, or bad strategy. The truth is, however, that the capital of Germany, with a population of 3.6 million people, will fall again into the list of the largest cities lacking a long-haul based airline at their international airport.

Since the fall of Air Berlin (AB) in October 2017, the airports of Berlin-Tegel (TXL) and Schönefeld (SXF), now combined into the massive Berlin-Brandenburg Aiport (BER), have been struggling to secure a reliable and stable airline that can offer regular services to long-haul destinations in America or Asia.

Germany is the home country of two of the largest premium and low-cost airlines in Europe, Lufthansa (LH) and Eurowings (EW), yet none of them have made any move to establish Berlin as another one of their hubs for transatlantic and long-distance flights.

From November 2023 onwards, the only airlines serving long-haul flights out of Berlin will be United (UA) from New York (EWR), Qatar Airways (QR) from Doha (DOH), and Scoot Airlines (TR) from Singapore (SIN).

Featured image: Alberto Cucini/Airways

https://airwaysmag.com/norse-caribbean-thailand-flights/