Iceland's WOW air launches £99 flights from London to the US

It may be the cheapest transatlantic flight ever – £99 one way to Boston and Washington DC from London.

WOW air (www.wowair.co.uk), a budget Icelandic airline, is making an introductory fare available to those booking a selected number of sale-price seats online from today.

The carrier is launching new flights from London Gatwick to Boston Logan International Airport on March 27 and to Baltimore Washington International, on June 4. They all include a layover in Reykjavik, the tiny Icelandic capital.

This makes the journey to Boston about three hours longer than a direct flight to the city and five and a half hours longer on the way back.

For Washington, the outbound and return journeys take around two hours and four hours longer than direct ones respectively.

A quick look at the airline's website this morning revealed that single flights were available on some dates early next year at the £99 headline price - albeit with a £8.98 "booking fee" on top. A return journey to Boston departing on April 20 (on a £99 fare) and returning on April 26, taking only hand luggage, costs £235.48 in total.

A return flight on the same dates with British Airways, for example, costs £612 currently, or £592 returning a day later, though this includes taxes, fees and charges, complimentary meals and a 23kg checked luggage allowance. Fliers can also take two cabin sized bags on board.

The availability of the £99 seat price, which includes taxes, will be based on demand, a WOW air spokesman said, advising those wishing to take advantage of the deal to book sooner rather than later. Hand luggage of no more than 5kg is included but it will cost £39 to check in a bag online. Seats with extra legroom - 35 inches as opposed to the standard 30 inches - cost £14 each.

The flights from Reykjavik to the US will be operated using Airbus A321 Extended Range aircraft. WOW air’s existing Airbus A320 family aircraft will carry passengers from London Gatwick to Reykjavik on the first leg of the journey.

The London to Boston flight will operate five days a week, the Washington flight four.

“This is just the beginning of our plans to transform low-cost transatlantic flights," said Skúli Mogensen, CEO of WOW air, "we’re opening up the market to a whole new market of travellers who might previously not have been able to afford transatlantic travel."

The low-cost airline market is "scrambling to offer cheap flights to North America", Mogensen added.

WOW air's transatlantic foray comes less than four months after another low-cost airline, Norwegian, launched services from Gatwick to three US cities - New York, Los Angeles and Fort Lauderdale - using Boeing 787 Dreamliners.

Fare for those routes start from £149 per person, but are typically more expensive. The cheapest November flight to New York with Norwegian is £209 one-way, for example, while the cheapest flight in January 2015 is £179.

Telegraph Travel's Soo Kim was among those on board the inaugural service in July, and found that Norwegian's on board "extras" also raise the cost of flying considerably, with a small, 330ml bottle of water priced at $4 (£2.50), sandwiches from $11 (£6.85), headsets for in-flight entertainment costing $5 (£3.10) and blankets $4.

Ryanair has previously suggested it hopes to launch low-cost flights to the US - with selected fares starting at an ambitious £10. It does not currently possess the medium- or long-range airfraft to offer the routes, however.

Other low-cost airlines to have made a decent fist at long-haul services include Air Asia X, the Malaysia-based long-haul arm of Air Asia, and Jetstar, which flies from Australia to destinations such as Japan and Hawaii.

Some attempts were less sucessful, however. Laker Airlines tried and failed with a no-frills transatlantic model, as did Zoom Airlines, while Oasis Hong Kong went bankrupt in 2008, three years after launching flights from the Chinese city to Gatwick and Vancouver.