On October 27, the final flight from Berlin to New York JFK will depart, leaving Germany's capital without a long-haul airline at its €6.5bn airport.
The carrier currently operates a substantial route network, serving ten US destinations from five European hubs, with London-Gatwick Airport as the largest. London has recently added flights to the Caribbean and Thailand for the winter 2023 season.
Berlin, which saw Norse's first flights to the US in August 2022, initially included ambitious routes such as three-weekly frequencies to Los Angeles and Fort Lauderdale and a daily service to JFK. JFK is also served from all other hubs, including London, Rome, Oslo, and Paris.
However, LAX and FLL flights have already ceased, and the remaining JFK service has been cut from daily to four times a week, resulting in a 69.2% reduction in weekly seat offerings in under a year.
Norse Atlantic Airways has yet to announce the termination of flights from Berlin-Brandenburg Airport officially. The last scheduled flight to New York ends on October 27, 2023, with the aircraft returning on October 29, presumably the last Norse flight to land in Berlin.
The airline has not revealed plans to discontinue the BERLIN-JFK route in the winter or switch it to seasonal service, nor has it done so for the now-defunct Fort Lauderdale and Los Angeles services.
Passengers can still fly from Berlin to the US with Norse via connections through other hubs, thanks to partnerships with Spirit Airlines, EasyJet, and Norwegian Air Shuttle. These agreements enable the carrier to expand its reach to over 600 weekly connections across Europe and the US.
The lack of a long-haul airline at Berlin's international airport, home to 3.6 million people, may be attributed to coincidence, misfortune, or poor strategy. Since Air Berlin's collapse in October 2017, Berlin's airports have struggled to secure a stable airline offering regular long-haul services to America or Asia.
Despite Germany hosting two of Europe's largest premium and low-cost airlines, Lufthansa and Eurowings, neither has made moves to establish Berlin as a hub for transatlantic and long-distance flights. From November 2023, only United, Qatar Airways, and Scoot Airlines will serve long-haul flights from Berlin.
