Cheap, Long-Haul Flights Are Back --- Without the splash that budget carriers once had, a new crop of players are going the distance

“Remember the days when New York-London, Los Angeles-Paris and Chicago-Barcelona round trips were sold for around $200? In the minds of many Americans, the much-touted "long-haul, low-cost" transformation of air travel ended when the big disrupter of this market, Norwegian Air Shuttle, was forced to exit trans-Atlantic routes in 2021.

 

Yet the revolution may be more alive than ever, just in a different form.

 

Schedules for July and August show that budget airlines plan to offer 2.7 million monthly seats on wide-body jets such as the Boeing 787 Dreamliner and Airbus's A330 and A350. In 2018 and 2019, which was the heyday of Norwegian and its peers -- namely IAG-owned Level, Malaysia's AirAsia X and Australia's Jetstar -- that figure was below two million, according to Cirium Diio Mi.

 

Many companies have historically failed to make the economics of no-frills flights to faraway destinations work, including pioneers Loftleithir and Laker Airways. Norwegian, which was briefly the third-largest trans-Atlantic airline, has gone back to being a Scandinavian short-haul operator, and its share price is 99% lower than it was a decade ago.

 

But a new crop of airlines are betting that they can make these flights sustainable, whether as a small stand-alone operation, an offering within larger networks, or as a true disruptive model in Asia-Pacific and the Middle East.

 

Across the Atlantic, startups such as French Bee now operate six A350s to destinations such as Montreal and Miami from Paris Orly Airport. Or take Norse Atlantic Airways, a pared-down version of Norwegian partly owned by its founder Bjorn Kjos, who snapped up 12 of his former company's 787s. And Level, which is ramping up its Barcelona-based operations again.

 

Direct international flights between smaller airports have never been big business for the top-three U.S. network airlines, and schedule data for between 2015 and now shows they have moved even further away from them. This leaves room for dedicated point-to-point competitors.

 

Nevertheless, these upstarts will probably struggle to break out of their niche. Unlike Southwest Airlines, which upended the short-haul industry after the 1980s, operators of nine-hour flights can't turn around planes in 20 minutes. Nor can they find that many thin routes where an all-economy wide-body flight makes money. Airline executives were too optimistic in the 2010s, when the 787 and the A350 -- leaner wide-body jets -- were introduced, but quickly discovered that filling 291 seats to Bilbao is still a tall task, even at steep discounts.

 

United Airlines and American Airlines may be in a better position to link these types of small airports to their big hubs, where there is more traffic. Since the pandemic, they have shifted international leisure capacity this way.

 

This high season, United has started nonstop services from Newark, N.J., to Bilbao in Spain, Faro in Portugal and Palermo in Italy, and from Washington Dulles to Venice. American has introduced Charlotte, N.C.-Athens and Philadelphia-Edinburgh. Even Delta Air Lines, which hasn't broadly embraced this strategy, has launched opportunistic direct routes from Minneapolis-St. Paul to Rome and Copenhagen.

 

This is a break with the traditional network-airline playbook, which is to focus on big hub airports that have lots of business and connecting travelers in order to sell as many expensive premium cabins as possible, with leisure passengers only serving to fill the rest of the plane. It contrasts with the Southwest model, which is to use discounted prices to create demand between new city pairs.

 

The latter is what Norwegian tried to do with its nonrefundable fares that excluded checked bags, meals and seat selection. But legacy airlines have caught up, and now achieve the same through "basic economy" seats.

 

To be sure, new jet models could eventually challenge this, and open up markets for established low-cost, short-haul operators that are trying to fly greater distances, such as WestJet, Wizz Air and JetBlue. The Airbus A321XLR, which has entered service this year, can travel 5,000 miles while sometimes carrying fewer than 200 passengers.

 

JetBlue has ordered 13 of them, and has a chance of reinventing itself. After getting squeezed in the U.S. market, its stock has dropped roughly 80% since 2019.

 

Recently, it slashed a bunch of those unprofitable routes in favor of shifting capacity to link its East Coast hubs with smaller European leisure destinations, where it has far wider profit margins than its competitors, official statistics suggest. It announced in May a new partnership with United at New York's JFK Airport.

 

The latest budget-flight revolution may already be here. It is just subtler than expected.” [1]

 

1. EXCHANGE --- Heard on the Street: Cheap, Long-Haul Flights Are Back --- Without the splash that budget carriers once had, a new crop of players are going the distance. Sindreu, Jon.  Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 12 July 2025: B12.