Icelandic budget airline WOW Air announced Wednesday that it will expand its service to four Midwestern US cities—St. Louis, Cleveland, Cincinnati, and Detroit—beginning in Spring 2018, USA Today reports.
WOW will run four flights a week between each city and the airline’s hub, Keflavik International Airport near Reykjavik, Iceland. One-way tickets will start at $99.99. Passengers will have the option of scheduling connecting flights from Reykjavik to any of 12 other cities in Europe, including Paris, Amsterdam, London, Berlin, Frankfurt, Copenhagen, and more. Connection itineraries originating in the US will start at $149.99
“Our unique opportunity is to use Iceland as a hub. We can then distribute the traffic to our main destinations in Europe,” said WOW Air founder and CEO Skúli Mogensen, per USA Today. “…That’s really the key. Instead of having a single point-to-point flight, we actually give you a very affordable flight to multiple destinations in Europe via Iceland.”
WOW already serves seven other cities in the US. In 2015, the airline began serving Boston and Baltimore/Washington (BWI). Later, it expanded its service on the east coast, adding flights in and out of Newark, NJ and Miami, FL, and made inroads on the west coast in LA and San Francisco.
Now, WOW is looking to establish a presence in the Midwest. Earlier this year, it announced plans to serve Pittsburgh and Chicago.
Some doubt whether there exists an adequate market for trans-Atlantic travel in WOW’s four newest cities. Morgensen, who says his company is “very excited about these cities,” expects low fares to spur demand.
“With those kind of prices, we have seen in other markets that we enter that we have stimulated the market significantly,” he said, adding: “We like the region. We think there’s opportunity there. We think it’s under-served.”
Indeed, competition is sparse. Though trans-Atlantic service in and out of Detroit is common, WOW will be the only airline to fly between St. Louis and Europe, according to USA Today. Moreover, only Delta flies between Cincinnati and Europe.
WOW will battle for the Cleveland market with fellow Icelandic airline Icelandair, which announced Cleveland-Reykjavik service Tuesday. According to USA Today, no commercial airplane has flown across the Atlantic from Cleveland Hopkins International Airport since 2009, when United, which was based out of CHIA until 2014, discontinued a flight from Cleveland to London Heathrow.
Like WOW, Icelandair will run four flights a week between Cleveland and Reykjavik, with connections available from Reykjavik to other destinations throughout Europe. Icelandair, though, will serve more than twice as many European destinations as WOW.
But, Mogensen is confident WOW’s low fares will give the company an edge over Icelandair and other competitors.
“We welcome competition from all airlines,” he said. “No other airline has offered as low fares as we have done over the Atlantic.”
For comparison, a one-way Icelandair ticket from Denver to Reykjavik costs upwards of $250. WOW’s one-ways to Iceland from the Midwest, as mentioned, will cost less than $100.
Icelandair plans to fly Boeing 757s in and out of Cleveland, while WOW intends to use the single-aisle Airbus A321.
Tickets for WOW flights out of its four new US service cities went on sale Wednesday. Detroit service will begin April 26, 2018; Cleveland flights will start on May 4, 2018; Cincinnati service will commence May 10, 2018, and St. Louis service will begin May 17, 2018.
Icelandair says its Cleveland service will begin May 2018, but has yet to provide specific dates.
Mogensen says WOW will make more announcements regarding expanded US service in the near future.
“We will continue to add destinations in the U.S. in the next weeks and as always offer the lowest fares.”
Featured image via Wikimedia Commons
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