While they were initially established as a way to shuttle people willing to forgo several usual frills for a few hours between nearby cities, low-cost airlines have increasingly been expanding to cover large stretches of the world and fly longer and longer distances between continents.
Both launched in the last three years, Reykjavik-based Play and Oslo-based Norse Atlantic Airways (NRSAF) have been offering travelers flights between the East Coast of the U.S. and European capitals such as London, Paris and Amsterdam for $250 each way as a base fare while the latter recently also launched a new 5,188-mile flight between London and South Africa's Cape Town.
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The African continent has, in general, landed on the radar of multiple airlines in 2024. At the start of May 2024, Delta Air Lines (DAL) announced that it would be bringing back the New York-Lagos route that it paused in 2022 while United Airlines (UAL) recently launched new flights to Ghana and South Africa from several U.S. cities.
Chief executive says this marks 'the beginning of a new journey into Africa'
Over in Asia, the continent's largest low-cost carrier AirAsia plans to start running a flashy new route between its base and Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur and Kenya's Nairobi on Nov. 15, 2024 on an Airbus 330 (EADSF) wide-body plane.
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"It marks the beginning of a new journey into Africa, and while our roots are in Asia and ASEAN, our dream has always been to make Kuala Lumpur a global low-cost carrier hub," AirAsia CEO Tony Fernandes said in a statement. "This expansion brings us closer to that vision, giving us a solid footing to build global connections and opportunities."
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Want to travel to Africa from different parts of the world? Here is how much that will cost you
While several mainstream Asian airlines already run routes to Nairobi's Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (NBO), the new flight is the first low-cost option to the country from Malaysia. It will take just under nine hours and, according to Fernandes, was also chosen as a way to make Malaysia the stopover for travelers looking to get to Kenya from other parts of the world. Approximate costs for a flight on the airline have not yet been announced by the airline; as of July 2024, a late-summer economy flight from Kuala Lumpur to Nairobi with a transfer in Doha's Hamad Airport (DOH) comes up as 3,224 Malaysian ringgit (roughly $688 USD) on Malaysia Airlines' website.
"This route represents excellent connectivity opportunities to other key markets we serve, including Australia, China, South Korea, Japan and Thailand," he continued further. "Travelers across the region can now journey more affordably to Kenya, with a convenient stopover in Kuala Lumpur."
A recent travel report conducted by investment company and Fidelity brand IPX 1031 found that the average ticket to an African city from a North American one clocks in at $1,497 — only a 1% increase from a year ago but significantly higher than the $1,212 it costs to get to Europe, $794 for South America and $628 for the Caribbean. Largely due to the distance, there are currently no low-cost airlines that run flights between the U.S. and Africa.
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