14 responses to “3 Links I Love: WOW Gets Crazy, Hawaiian Stories, United’s New Coach Seat”

1. 

   JB

   May 4, 2018

   Looks like those new seats will serve to Aspire you to book business class next time. And they are going in 3-4-3 on the 777 :(

   Reply
2. 

   A

   May 4, 2018

   I personally have not paid much attention to WOW and not really sure how they differ from IcelandAir. That being said I did notice they serve former hubs like St. Louis, Cleveland and Cincinnati. I’m sure they work well in those markets with little or no competition. For Asia where is their hub going to be? HNL is the only mid-point place where you can really copy the KEF model. Or are they going to fly all the way into Japan from under served and forgotten US cities? Does that even work with the A330-900? And does Cleveland have demand for Asian flights? DTW isn’t far away and has a bunch of directs all over Asia. Agree this sounds foolish.

   Reply
   1. 

      Oliver

      May 4, 2018

      > For Asia where is their hub going to be?

      Maybe DUT? ;)

      How do they get traffic rights for a hub in another country?

      Reply
3. 

   J Walter

   May 4, 2018

   WOW flights to Asia aren’t that crazy. They’ll need a plane with 6000+ mile range (12 hour flights are exponentially tougher than their current ~9 hour max down to LAX) and KEF is apparently strained, but KEF is on a reasonable GC line from the US to a couple Chinese cities, BKK, and India.

   Reply
   1. 

      B

      May 4, 2018

      From To
      KEF SIN 7,181 mi
      JFK SIN 9,537 mi
      2 segment path:
      JFK KEF 2,593 mi
      KEF SIN 7,181 mi
      9,773 mi (+2.5%)

      Reply
   2. 

      Sam

      May 4, 2018

      Yup. If you’re going one-stop from the US East Coast to Singapore, doing it via KEF is a shorter flight path than connecting anywhere in the Middle East, Europe, or US West Coast.

      http://www.gcmap.com/mapui?P=jfk-kef-sin,+jfk-lax-sin,+jfk-dxb-sin

      Reply
      1. 

         Sam

         May 4, 2018

         That said, I think the place for skepticism is if customers are willing to tolerate their low level of service on a 12 hour flight. I did EDI-KEF-BWI last fall and those (relatively) short hops pretty much maxed out my patience for paying for water, no entertainment, etc.

         Reply
   3. 

      Kilroy

      May 4, 2018

      I played around with the GC mapper and struck gold… KEF is exactly on the GC route of JFK-BOM (Mumbai, India). I wonder if WOW might be able to target the leisure crowd heading from the US back to India to visit friends and family.

      JFK – BOM = 7,799 mi
      JFK – KEF (2,593 mi) + KEF – BOM (5,206 mi) = 7,799 mi

      As an aside, I find it a little surprising that “BOM” is still used as an airport code, even if it does derive from Bombay. Must lead to some occasional awkward confusion in the airports.

      Reply
      1. 

         JB

         May 4, 2018

         Yeah, ORD or MDW is crystal clear for Chicago. (and yes, I know they comes from it’s old name of Orchard Field and, the battle of Midway). I doubt BOM causes confusion. It’s not like there’s another city in India called Bombay that people keep showing up at looking for an airport!

         Reply
      2. 

         Bill in ATL

         May 6, 2018

         After the cities in India changed their names, there was not a code that worked with the new names. So they stuck with the old ones. Same reason Beijing’s code is PEK.

         Reply
         1. 

            tharanga

            May 7, 2018

            I suspect the point isn’t that Bombay is an old name, but rather that BOM sounds rather like ‘bomb’.

            Reply
            1. 

               Shady exploiter

               May 18, 2018

               By that token, fukuoka airport has an even more unfortunate IATA code!

               Reply
4. 

   Harvey

   May 4, 2018

   I’d imagine that WOW are looking more at Asia-Iceland travel rather than connections. According to the tour operator I used in Iceland, there are a growing number of Asian tourists visiting each year and it is currently an unserved region from KEF. Personally, I think Tokyo, Singapore or Seoul would work well and I wouldn’t be surprised to see them operate successfully.
   As for a foreign hub, I think they’d be better off keeping excess aircraft in KEF over winter; their reliability is notoriously low in winter, and having an aircraft or two spare to pick up slack can’t be a bad idea. Plus this downtime allows them to do heavy mainainance, and if they really want to put the aircraft somewhere else there’s always the option of leasing them out for the season. But they must have their reasons for choosing a foreign hub so I guess we’ll wait and see.

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5. 

   Sean S.

   May 4, 2018

   WOW plans only seem crazy if you forget about Finnair, which has also positioned itself as the gateway to Asia for European’s by virtue of its location when you look at a great circle map. As someone else posted, the distances are not crazy, and if they are able to funnel people cheaply from America to destinations in Asia which would require multiple stop overs, then why not?

   Reply

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