New Flights to Oslo, Norway from Fort Lauderdale Airport
Norwegian airline Norse Atlantic Airways, which launched service last week from JFK International Airport in New York, launched three times a week service Monday from Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport. It will fly non-stop to Oslo, the capital of Norway.
Norse Atlantic Airways
Discount travel to Europe became a reality on Monday when a startup carrier inaugurated three times weekly flights to Oslo, Norway from Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport.
Norwegian airline Norse Atlantic Airways, which launched its service last week from JFK International Airport in New York, departed at 3:30 p.m. Monday from Fort Lauderdale bound for Oslo, the Norwegian capital. He was due to arrive Tuesday at 6:35 a.m.
The flight, the first nonstop from Fort Lauderdale to Oslo, is winning over passengers with its cheap introductory fares. One-way flights from Fort Lauderdale to Oslo start at $149, return flights from $167. It will leave Fort Lauderdale on Wednesday, Friday and Sunday.
And as with other discount carriers such as Spirit Airlines, passengers will need to pay for carry-on baggage ($25), checked baggage ($60-$170), meals ($20-$30), priority check-in ($20) and seat selection ($25 to $120), among others.
Norse Air flies Boeing 787 Dreamliners that were once owned by Norwegian Air. The planes carry 333 people.
“We are open for business,” Broward County Mayor Michael Udine said. “We move people. You can see that the airport is very busy. And it’s great to have a direct transatlantic flight, direct from Fort Lauderdale to Norway.
“We are very happy to have landed in Fort Lauderdale,” Bjorn Tore-Larsen, CEO of Norse Atlantic, said at the airport Monday. Tore-Larsen said the company moved Norse’s US headquarters to the Fort Lauderdale airport given its “perfect” size.
“You don’t drown in the millions of passengers. But at the same time, it’s not so small that you can’t go where you want.“
Norse, which began in March 2021, will begin flying from Orlando in July. It will mark the airline’s second location in Florida and third on the East Coast with JFK flights.
The U.S. government‘s decision to drop COVID-19 testing in June for inbound international travelers has boosted travel, said Anthony Cordo, executive vice president of Visit Lauderdale.
Air travel resumed in 2022, following major shortages in 2020 and 2021 due to the coronavirus pandemic. The number of people who passed through TSA checkpoints on Sunday was 2,384,449, according to the US Transportation Security Administration. That’s up from 2,100,761 on June 19, 2021, and a significant increase from the 590,456 who passed through TSA checkpoints on June 19, 2020, shortly after the pandemic began in March 2020.
According to Fort Lauderdale Airport General Manager Mark Gale, the economic impact of Norse’s flights will bring $48 million to the local tourism industry for the year.
“We’re very keen to try to make sure we’re doing our part as an economic engine for the community in which we live and serve,” Gale said. “And that if we can attract this service to our airport, that those who use this service to come here, whether they come for business or for pleasure, that has a significant economic impact for the good of our community.”
Norse only flies to Oslo, but the airline said it plans to open flights to London, Berlin and Paris in the future.
This story was originally published June 20, 2022 7:19 p.m.