WOW Air Announces More US Expansion – This Time To Dallas/Ft Worth

a man and woman in cowboy hats

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WOW Air, the Iceland-based low-cost carrier, has just announced that it is to add Dallas/Ft Worth to its list of US destinations – look out American Airlines a transatlantic low-cost carrier is coming right for you!

Apologies in advance for the brevity of this post but I’m on the move and I’m typing on an iPhone!

WOW Air say it will commence 3x weekly service between Reykjavik and Dallas/Ft Worth from 24 May 2018 on the following schedule:

WW191 KEF 21:30 – 00:45+1 day DFW (Mon, Wed & Fri)
WW192 DFW 16:10 – 04:45 KEF+1 day (Tue, Thu & Sat)

The route will be served with WOW’s Airbus A330 aircraft that, per the airline, “seat between 338 and 343 passengers“.

The route is already open for bookings and WOW says that they’re offering fares as low as $99 one way to Iceland and from $149 one way to the rest of Europe.

That claim appears to be supported by the airline’s booking engine which shows $149 one way flights to Dublin right now:

a screenshot of a flight schedule

Having said that this isn’t the full picture.

It’s all very well offering cheap oneway fares but, traditionally, travelers want to get back home at the end of a trip and the return fares aren’t anywhere near that cheap.

The best I’ve seen from Dublin to Dallas is $299 but I’ve also seen fares as high as $459.99 one way too.

Comfort/Issues

You’re not going to get much comfort if you’re booking the cheaper fares as WOW offers as little as 29″ of seat pitch on some of its A330’s and, even if you book the best seat on the aircraft, you’re still only going to have a measly 17″ of seat width.

a screenshot of a chart

I’m also not sold on the arrival time in Dallas. Arriving at 00:45 means that you’re definitely overnighting in Dallas whether you want to or not. That will add an unwelcome cost to a journey if all you want to do is connect onwards…which I’m guessing a lot of people will want to do.

Bottom Line

I’m already on the record as not really being a fan of WOW Air (and that’s despite never having flown with them) but there’s something nice about seeing a low-cost carrier going straight for American Airlines heartland. They give us “Basic Economy” and then a low-cost carrier uses their own version of Basic Economy to compete with them – that’s Karma.

I can’t imagine American is all that happy about having low-cost competition across the Atlantic straight into its fortress hub….but I guess there’s a chance WOW will actually feed traffic to American if passengers wish to connect out of Dallas when they arrive.

This all also raises an interesting question: Now that low-cost carriers are ensconced on transatlantic routes how long before the legacy US carriers move their Basic Economy fares to their transatlantic routes too?