When Norwegian announced that it will be launching non-stop flights between Singapore and London Gatwick last September, it was greeted with much fanfare for everyone here in Singapore. With return fares to London Gatwick hovering around S$500 to S$600, it definitely was a bargain if you’re planning to head to Europe.
However, barely a year into its commercial service, Norwegian has just sent out an email to passengers informing them that the last flight between Singapore and London Gatwick will be on 11 January 2019.
Here’s a screenshot which I received which was sent to passengers with bookings with Norwegian on the Singapore – London Gatwick route:
Flights are still available for booking up until 11 January 2019
At the time of writing, you can still book revenue flights with Norwegian from Singapore to London Gatwick through to 11 January 2019. Here’s the fare calendar from Norwegian’s website:
The last commercial flight between Singapore and London Gatwick with Norwegian will depart on 11 January 2019 as DI7410. If you are flying out on 11 January 2019 to London Gatwick with Norwegian, do note that you will have to purchase your own return flight and this will be extremely expensive.
Full-service carriers charge an exorbitant amount for a one-way fare as these are usually booked into the full fare buckets.
In the email, Norwegian also wrote that it will be offering solutions to the affected passengers who were set to fly with them after 12 January 2019. However, it is unknown what type of compensation will the affected passengers receive.
What other low-cost options are there to Europe?
With Norwegian withdrawing from the Singapore market, the only airline which will offer non-stop flights to Europe is Scoot with flights to Berlin and Athens.
If you’re willing to venture up north, Condor will be flying from Kuala Lumpur to Frankfurt non-stop from November 2018.
Concluding Thoughts
It’s certainly sad to see Norwegian pulling out from Singapore as that leaves travellers with fewer non-stop options to Europe. I’m hoping this will be a temporary hiatus from Singapore and that the route will restart sometime in the future.
Air Asia X has been hinting that non-stop flights to Europe will be restarted soon when they take delivery of their A330neos and Scoot has not been hinting much at new long-haul destinations.
I’m hoping that either one of these regional low-cost carriers will occupy the void that Norwegian will be leaving behind come 12 January 2019.
Sad, I took it to London a few months ago and it was a good experience.
I’ve been wanting to try it out too. Oh well, only can hope that they’ll return to SG
Me 2
Language fuss-pot here. “Lesser” in incorrectly used in the Concluding Thoughts section. “Lesser” refers to less significant or less important in rank, quality or magnitude. To denote numerically fewer amounts, it should be “less”. 🙂
Ah right. Heh. (poof it’s corrected)
Gutted 🙁
We flew from Singapore to London in February 2018. It is so annoying Norwegian Air stopped this route. We used Norwegian on a round the world routing this year. We flew from Copenhagen to Bangkok and from Los Angeles to Stockholm.