Some of the most attractive transatlantic airfares in aviation history are currently on sale. On sale, that is, to Americans willing to make that trip during off-season periods (namely, “shoulder” months, like May or October.
The sales are offered primarily by fairly new upstart airlines. One of them is the Icelandic carrier called WOW Air that will fly you from Boston to Reykjavik, Iceland, for as little as $99 each way. This will enable you to visit the hottest new destination in travel, Iceland, though of course you’ll pay extra and varying sums to proceed onwards from there (if you wish to do so) to various European capitals.
The other bargain airfares have been announced (though not yet implemented) by a much larger carrier, Norwegian Air, which will fly you each way from new transatlantic airports in Providence, Rhode Island, or Hartford, Connecticut, to Ireland, for as little as $65 each way.
But that $65 will need to be supplemented by additional sums for the right to check baggage, choose seats, or enjoy meals on board. Still, if you can travel like a backpacker, carrying a small kit strapped to your rear, you will fly the ocean for a breathtaking low price.
These shockers have been approached but not equaled on other transatlantic airlines by intermittent airfare bargains resulting from the decline in transatlantic travel by foreigners discouraged from visiting the U.S. by the proposed ban on Muslim travel to the U.S. or by the general anti-foreigner rhetoric of the Trump administration.
There is no longer any doubt that a sharp reduction in foreign tourism to the U.S. has taken place, and that the airliners—as well as the U.S. tourism industry—are suffering from it.
The tourist officials of New York City have actually placed a specific figure on the reduction in visits by foreigners to the Big Apple, and they are predicting a near-immediate drop of more than 300,000 tourists to their city alone. If you add the reduction in tourism by foreigners to Hawaii, California, Las Vegas, Orlando and elsewhere, you easily reach a reduction of a million tourists visitors each year to our country. This will, in turn, lead to a downturn in touristic spending of several billions of dollars, and a consequent reduction in tourism jobs. And it is also the factor that has led to a recent reduction in transatlantic airfares.
Should you buy your transatlantic tickets now? Or would it be wiser to expect a further reduction in the weeks ahead, resulting from our growing reputation as an unfriendly, anti-Muslim country, causing a further downturn in the number of foreign tourists coming to the U.S.A.
This is one of the decisions that persons wanting to cross the Atlantic on vacation will need to make in the time ahead.
