Norwegian Air hopes to sell one-way tickets to North America for $69 (£45) as early as 2017 by flying to US airports that have low fees, chief executive Bjørn Kjos has said. 
 
 Europe's third-largest budget airline is considering flights to Edinburgh, Birmingham and Bergen in Norway from small US airports that have little to no international service, including New York's Westchester County Airport and Connecticut's Bradley International Airport, just north of Hartford. 
 
 Average prices on such routes are likely to be closer to $300 round trip, Mr Kjos said. 
 
 That price tag would be much lower than many of Norwegian's current long-haul fares, which cost $500 because of higher fees levied by busier airports. 
 
 These new plans are part of Norwegian's broader move to cut prices and take share from traditional flag carriers that dominate transatlantic flying. 
 
 While airlines such as Lufthansa offer travellers hundreds of destinations via connections at airport hubs, Norwegian is aiming to make non-stop services to smaller cities on either side of the Atlantic more common. 
 
 "I think you will see a lot to that effect within five years' time," Mr Kjos said. 
 
 • Are £99 flights to Canada the beginning of a budget transatlantic revolution? 
 
 "What will happen to (Lufthansa) when everyone starts to fly direct?" 
 
 Norwegian has 100 737 MAX jets from Boeing on order and expects to receive five in 2017. 
 
 These planes are equipped to cruise over the Atlantic but are smaller than most jets that currently make the journey, making them a better size for smaller airports such as Birmingham. 
 
 They're also more fuel efficient than their larger cousins. 
 
 Regulators will have to agree to set up customs stations at US regional airports to handle international traffic, although Mr Kjos said he was confident this could be arranged. 
 
 The airline said that while no decisions had been made on which UK airports would be included in the new, low-cost route, its existing operations at Gatwick, Manchester, Edinburgh and Birmingham would "naturally be the first destinations to consider operating from". 
 
 Norwegian is not the only airline to market cheap fares across the Atlantic. 
 
 Iceland's Wow Air recently offered one-way fares between Boston and Paris for $99. Lufthansa's low-cost subsidiary Eurowings is also starting cheap long-haul flights. 
 
 Kjos downplayed the competitive threat of Eurowings, saying "I don't believe in their being able to operate low cost with a Boeing 767", in part because the widebody planes save less fuel and have smaller range than planes such as Boeing Dreamliners in Norwegian's fleet. 
 
 Norwegian reported this week that it had filled 96pc of long-haul plane seats in September, helping the airline post better-than-expected results. ||||| Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings. 
 
 Norwegian Air Shuttle ASA hopes to sell one-way tickets to Europe for $69 as early as 2017 by flying from U.S. airports that have low fees, Chief Executive Officer Bjørn Kjos said in an interview Tuesday. 
 
 Europe's third-largest budget airline is considering flights to Edinburgh and Bergen, Norway from U.S. airports that have little to no international service today, such as New York's Westchester County Airport and Connecticut's Bradley International Airport, just north of Hartford, Kjos said. 
 
 Average prices on such routes are likely to be closer to $300 round trip, Kjos said, compared with many of Norwegian's fares that run more than $500 today because of higher fees levied by busier airports. 
 
 The potential plans are part of Norwegian's broader move to cut prices and take share from traditional flag carriers that dominate trans-Atlantic flying. 
 
 While airlines such as Deutsche Lufthansa AG offer travelers hundreds of destinations via connections in airport hubs, Norwegian is aiming to make nonstop service to small cities that straddle the Atlantic more common, which keeps costs low. 
 
 "I think you will see a lot to that effect within five years' time," Kjos said. "What will happen to (Lufthansa) when everyone starts to fly direct?" 
 
 Norwegian has 100 737 MAX jets from Boeing Co on order and expects to receive five in 2017. These planes are equipped to traverse the Atlantic but are smaller than most jets that currently do so, making them a better size for international flights to cities such as Birmingham in Britain, Kjos said. 
 
 Regulators will have to agree to set up customs stations at U.S. regional airports to handle international traffic, although Kjos said he is confident this can be arranged. 
 
 Norwegian is not the only airline to market cheap fares across the Atlantic. 
 
 Iceland's Wow Air recently offered one-way fares between Boston and Paris for $99. Lufthansa's low-cost subsidiary Eurowings is also starting cheap long-haul flights. 
 
 Kjos downplayed the competitive threat of Eurowings, saying, "I don't believe in their being able to operate low cost with a Boeing 767," in part because the widebody planes save less fuel and have smaller range than planes such as Boeing Dreamliners in Norwegian's fleet. 
 
 Norwegian separately reported Tuesday that it filled 96 percent of long-haul plane seats in September, helping the airline post better-than-expected results. ||||| How much do consumers in smaller markets crave cheap trans-Atlantic flights? 
 
 We’ll find out by this summer, when European discounter Norwegian Air launches 10 new routes from three smaller U.S. airports — Stewart International Airport in New York’s Southern Hudson Valley about 65 miles north of Manhattan, Hartford Bradley International Airport in Central Connecticut, and T.F. Green Airport in Providence, Rhode Island. Norwegian will operate all flights with a new single-aisle airplane, the Boeing 737 Max. 
 
 Norwegian had been teasing the new service for weeks, but on Thursday morning, it named the routes and released introductory prices. From Stewart International Airport, Norwegian will fly to Dublin and Shannon in Ireland, and Belfast and Edinburgh in the UK, while from Providence it will fly to all those destinations plus Cork, Ireland. From Hartford, Norwegian will serve only Edinburgh. 
 
 At 6 a.m. Eastern time on Thursday, Norwegian put on sale “quite a few thousand” tickets for $65 one way from the three U.S. markets, Lars Sande, Norwegian’s senior vice president of sales, said in an interview. After those go, the cheapest fares one-way fares are expected to be $99, though those tickets also will be limited. Like most airlines with its model, Norwegian charges extra for nearly everything, from advanced seat assignments, to onboard food, to checked luggage. 
 
 “For too long, Americans have paid too much to go to Europe,” Sande said. 
 
 Flying to smaller airports is a bold move. Most international airlines prefer to go where the people are — big-city airports with millions of potential travelers living within 50 miles. Norwegian has used that approach too, and it flies double-aisle Boeing 787s to New York Kennedy, Oakland, Los Angeles, Boston and Fort Lauderdale, among others. 
 
 Norwegian’s past big-city approach has served it well, allowing it to compete head-to-head with legacy carriers and take advantage of near-limitless demand between major cities like London and Los Angeles. But this small airport approach will be trickier, airline industry analyst Brett Snyder said in a recent post on his blog, Cranky Flier. He wondered if Norwegian still will need to rely on passengers from larger cities to fill these flights. 
 
 “In the end, is there enough meat on the bone to get people to schlep out to Stewart?” he said. “Can people save enough money to make it worth it? Maybe there is just enough, barring competitive response, but do you really think the legacy airlines are going to take this lying down?” 
 
 But Sande said Norwegian isn’t expecting many passengers from New York City or Boston to come to the outlying airports. Instead, Norwegian is betting each of its three new markets has enough of a local population to sustain profitable flights. 
 
 It helps that Norwegian will be using a small plane. On its 737s, Norwegian only has to fill 189 seats, or 155 fewer than on the airline’s Boeing 787-9s. And, as another bonus, it costs less money to rent airport space and pay landing fees at smaller airports — savings the airline can pass to customers. 
 
 “The catchment areas around these airports are big,” Sande said. “Not everybody want to go to [New York] JFK, [Boston] Logan or Newark. These are airports that are very efficient. It will make the whole experience for the passenger very smooth.” 
 
 Of the three airports, only Hartford has service to any of Europe’s larger cities, with flights to Dublin on Aer Lingus. Germany’s Condor Airlines flew from Providence to Frankfurt for about a year, but stopped the route in 2016 because it was not able to make it work. Providence still has a flight to the Azores, a Portuguese-controlled archipelago in the Atlantic Ocean. 
 
 On its flights, Norwegian expects slightly more than half of the passengers to be coming from Europe, where the company’s brand is strong. But the carrier plans to be honest in describing the location of the U.S., Sande said. 
 
 “We re going to sell it just as it is — Stewart, New York, as gateway to New York state,” Sande said. “We are not going to say this is Boston or New York and then people will get confused or angry with us.” 
 
 If it works, Norwegian could launch more flights. The carrier has ordered 100 737 Max aircraft, and it estimates the plane’s range is about 3,500 miles — long enough to fly as far as Providence to Barcelona, Sande said. 
 
 Here are the flights, which will be operated by Norwegian Air Shuttle under an operating certificate granted by Ireland. 
 
 Flights from Stewart International Airport in New York 
 
 Destination Begins Summer Frequency Winter Frequency Edinburgh, Scotland June 15 Daily Daily Belfast, Northern Ireland July 1 Three times weekly Twice weekly Dublin, Ireland July 1 Daily Three times weekly Shannon, Ireland July 2 Twice weekly Twice weekly 
 
 Flights from Providence’s T.F. Green Airport 
 
 Destination Begins Summer Frequency Winter Frequency Edinburgh, Scotland June 16 Four times weekly Twice weekly Belfast, Northern Ireland July 1 Twice weekly None Cork, Ireland July 1 Three times weekly Twice weekly Dublin, Ireland July 2 Five times weekly Three times weekly Shannon, Ireland July 3 Twice weekly Twice weekly 
 
 Flights from Hartford Bradley International Airport 
 
 Destination Begins Summer Frequency Winter Frequency Edinburgh, Scotland June 17 Three times weekly Twice weekly 
 
 Note: Winter season begins Oct. 29.
– It's hard to find a one-way ticket domestically for $69, but if the CEO of Norwegian Air has his way, a ticket for that much may soon be available between Europe and the US, NBC News reports. Bjorn Kjos' master plan is to connect flights from smaller coastal US airports—New York's Westchester County Airport and Connecticut's Bradley International Airport have both been mentioned—that offer lower fees than busier airports to European destinations such as Bergen, Norway, and Edinburgh, Scotland. It's all part of the budget airline's blueprint to wrest trans-Atlantic market share away from larger airlines such as Lufthansa. Norwegian has 100 Boeing 737 MAX jets on order, with the first five set to arrive in 2017, the Telegraph notes. These planes are capable of flying over the ocean, but are more fuel-efficient and smaller, which would make them a better size for smaller airports like the one in Birmingham, England. Regulators would have to agree to the plan and set up customs stations at those US airports that don't currently handle international flights, but Kjos says he's sure that won't be an issue. A round-trip ticket will likely cost around $300 once all the fees are factored in, but that's still cheaper than the $500 or so that Norwegian's flights in and out of busier airports run, NBC notes. (One day of the week is the best day to buy a plane ticket.)