22-04-2025
Long-haul like Laker: can a transatlantic budget airline succeed?
From Sir Freddie Laker's ill-fated Skytrain in the 1980s to the more recent boom and bust of Norwegian, the dream to create a sustainably profitable, low-fare transatlantic airline has seen many carriers land up in the aviation graveyard.
Now another airline is giving it a go. JetBlue has resumed flights to Dublin from Boston and New York and next month launches Boston-Edinburgh, promising round-trip promotional fares starting at £449, while also resuming at Gatwick
Its secret sauce is to fly not the traditional widebody, twin-aisle long-haul intercontinental aircraft but the more fuel-efficient narrowbody, single-aisle 200-seater A321neo, whose 4,000 nautical mile range is not much greater than the distance of a typical transatlantic crossing.
Will it be a success? The shares of JetBlue, which is led
