Low-cost UK flights to la on the way

Skúli Mogensen, founder and CEO of WOW air

Low-cost flights to Los Angeles from the UK are on the way, as Icelandic airline WOW Air expands it budget transatlantic offerings.

The airline, which launched in November 2011, now connects 20 destinations across the US and Europe with the Icelandic capital, allowing people in London to hop up to Iceland via Gatwick airport before taking a connecting flight directly to Boston or Washington DC, a budget option that brought prices down industry-wide by 30 per cent between Boston and Iceland and by 14 per cent on flights between Boston and the UK.

These US services now operate year round and maintain consistent carrier loads of 90 per cent plus.

Earlier this year, the airline announced that it would begin flying to Montreal and Toronto in May 2016, with prices as low as its trademark £99 fare. Now, WOW is expanding once more, to the West Coast, with flights to Los Angeles and San Francisco confirmed as their fifth and sixth destinations in North America. The routes, starting from summer 2016, will be serviced by three new Airbus A330-300 aircraft, the first wide-body Planes in the WOW air fleet, which will each carry 340 passengers in a single-class configuration. The routes will connect with daily flights to Keflavik from London Gatwick (and other WOW air destinations in Europe), allowing Brits to travel with the airline to Los Angeles four times per week and San Francisco five times a week, all year round.

"We are thrilled to add Los Angeles and San Francisco to our fast growing network," says Skúli Mogensen, founder and CEO of WOW air. "This is a game changer for WOW air as we cement ourselves as the industry leader in the ultra-low-cost long haul category. With the addition of these long range A330-300 aircraft to our fleet, we will be able to offer fares from Europe to the US West Coast far cheaper than our competitors whilst maintaining great service with a smile, as we did with our routes to Boston, Washington DC, Toronto and Montreal."

The airline says its annual passenger capacity will more than double in 2016 to over 1.8 million, up from approximately 840,000 in 2015. Tickets will go on sale in January 2016.