Flying in or out of JFK will always be one of those unpleasant experiences you just have to power through — like ripping off a bandaid, which only takes a second.
Trying to break free of one of the so-called developed world’s most ridiculous airports, on the other hand — that takes hours.
The prospect of spending a Saturday night battling this unfortunate reality was almost enough to put me off flying Norse Atlantic Airways from NYC to London-Gatwick in late August.
Departing the dreaded Terminal 7, which used to at least pretend to be sort of civilized, back before British Airways upped sticks, Norse is one in a group of lost child airlines looking for a suitable home, which they’ll apparently be getting at some point, once this place is bulldozed.
For now, T7 rivals Terminal 1 (also due to be bashed to the ground) as the NYC-area departure point most likely to convince you that travel is bad, and that you should never leave your home again, and I’m including Newark in this ranking.
But the ticket cost less than $500 and it bought me a seat in the most reliably affordable upper class cabin flying across the Atlantic right now. How bad could it be — once I got on board, at least?
Only known as Premium, Norse’s service is a little different than the competing business class products and Premium Economy class products available on the market, incorporating a little bit of both in what appeared online to be a very nice, domestic-style business class cabin. Plenty comfy for a quick trip to Europe.
It also typically costs a lot less than what you’d pay for the equivalent elsewhere — even after paying an extra fee of about $60 to reserve an aisle seat. (My carry-on roller suitcase, at about 30 lbs., was included in the fare.)
I was about to learn that there’s a reason everything’s so cheap.
Norse, of course
Before there was Norse, there was Norwegian Airlines, which still exists, but stopped flying long-haul during the pandemic.
A group of moneyed investors was able to cobble together the money to take the no-longer-needed fleet of Boeing 787-9 Dreamliners, and a couple years on, they’re still here, which probably surprises even some of the people who work there — at $302 one way for a higher class of service ( that’s a real fare on multiple dates in October, you can look it up), how are they making a cent off of me?
Arriving at Terminal 7 at 11:45 p.m., way past most people’s bedtimes, the scene in the ticketing hall, all snaking, seething lines of frustrated passengers waiting, waiting, waiting, was something out of a movie — a disaster movie.
Even for John F. Kennedy International, things were surprisingly chaotic, with Norse flights to Rome, Paris and London all still needing to depart. All slotted, it seemed, to carry hundreds of people who right now were going nowhere fast.
None of whom, I’ll add, were able to check in online beforehand, because Norse doesn’t offer that service — not on their website, not on an app. (They don’t even have an app.)
Feeling like the rudest New Yorker, I elbowed my way to the front of the wrong line, irritating a bunch of Paris-bound travelers, to ask the only employee I could spot not already trying to tamp down someone else’s rising fury where the Premium check-in for Gatwick might be.
Their elegant solution — cut the line. Avoiding eye contact, I did just that, was in and out in a second and on to security, leaving the crowd, by now verging on unruly, behind. No special lane for Premium customers, but I didn’t need it — the bottleneck at the check-in desks meant no waiting to run the TSA gauntlet this evening.
Not that there was anything to rush into the terminal for, of course — despite having flights scheduled up until 1:30 a.m., most of the restaurants and shops appeared to be intent on shutting down by midnight.
And forget about any lounge access — if there was any offered, I wasn’t told about it, and I’m just guessing wildly here, but those probably closed hours before our flight as well.
The only thing to do — spritz myself with tester cologne from the duty free store, find the quietest corner of the terminal, sit down on a broken chair amid the uncollected trash, wait and remind myself I was getting too old for these kinds of adventures.
Let’s get out of here
Well into the small hours, boarding was called.
I’m not sure if Premium passengers were invited first — I nearly slept through the whole thing — but I was finally free of the terminal, and I was near-elated.
Things got even better after turning left instead of right, upon stepping on the plane — the best feeling — only to find a nearly empty front cabin.
Out of 56 plush-looking seats, laid out in a 2-3-2 arrangement, there couldn’t have been more than a dozen passengers, and I was one of the last ones in, welcomed by a crew of well-coiffed and personable employees, who all seemed very young.
Not that I needed the extra space to be comfortable. My leather aisle seat already bragged 43 inches of legroom — way above the standard 38 inches in competing Premium Economy cabins, much more like a Business product.
The seats are wider than you might be expecting, too — 19 inches, which is more than you get in Premium on some of the higher-end, usually much more expensive airlines.
There’s a generous amount of recline too, at 12 inches, which only becomes an issue when the person in front of you wants to get really comfortable.
That didn’t happen to me, because after takeoff, which happened as fast as it can at JFK, where interminable tarmac delays are the norm, I was able to move to a window seat with nobody in front or behind me.
After being served (very politely) a comically late dinner of jerk chicken and vegetables — surprisingly good, even if I was more in the mood for breakfast at 2:30 a.m. — I pulled the fold-out video screen up, put on 1993’s “The Fugitive,” and fell asleep.
And that was pretty much that — I woke up less than two hours before landing, drank some half-decent airline coffee and nibbled on a yogurt, emerging into the sunshine and Gatwick’s Terminal South like my flight hadn’t even happened. Easy and unmemorable — when it comes to flights, what more can you ask for?
The verdict
Getting on board and to the point of relaxation may have been an ordeal, but once that was all over, resting comfortably in the quiet, exceedingly well-ventilated cabin, watching Tommy Lee Jones and Harrison Ford do their cat-and-mouse game, we hadn’t even finished flying over Canada and I already gotten more than I paid for, compared to other carriers flying the same route.
In future, I would know not to expect any ground support, and I’m sure a loyalty program is never going to happen, ruling out making Norse my go-to, but when I need comfort on a budget and I need it now, it’s great to know there’s an airline that can do that and apparently still make a dollar or two.
Go
Service from New York, Miami, Orlando, Las Vegas and Los Angeles to multiple European gateways including London-Gatwick, Paris, Rome, Athens, Berlin and Oslo. Routes vary by season. Book at flynorse.com.
