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Edit: This article was updated on the 12th of September with additional information regarding their plane swapping and USB ports.

Primera Air is an ultra-low-cost carrier that is going head to head in the trans-Atlantic airline trade. As we well know this market is already super competitive, with the likes of Norwegian going as far as offering incredibly cheap first-class suites on their flights to New York, one has to wonder how can a new entrant possibly compete?

Well, to borrow that famous quote from the film Jurassic Park “Life, finds a way” or in this case, a plucky young airline will find a way or go bankrupt trying. Primera Air has thrown its hat into the ring and promises to offer the best way between the old and new world for those budget conscious travellers.

Who is Primera?

Primera Air is a low-cost carrier that ‘flies’ out of Iceland, much like WOW Air, but appears to be based in Riga and holds a Danish airline certificate (simply, Danish-Latvian airline with Icelandic owners). They are actually owned by a group of travel agencies and originally were designed to be used as a charter flight company for holiday packages (Talk about vertical integration!). However, they now also offer 41 scheduled routes, focusing on travel destinations (tourism) rather than population centres (business).

Their fleet is made up of fourteen planes; five Airbus A321neos and nine Boeing 737’s. They seem to love the Boeing 737’s with another eighteen on order (Maxs to be specific), eight of which will be leased and delivered in 2019. They also have another three planes on order of their previous fleet variety. These planes are equally split between the two arms of the company, Primera Air whom is the original airline that focuses on Europe trade and Primera Air Nordic, the newcomer who will go head to head for American travel.

And boy are they! At the beginning of 2018, they sold tickets between Europe and North America for only $99 USD. That makes a seat on Norwegian (For $271 USD each way), their competitor in this market, looks like a private Qatar first class suite!

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What is it like to fly on Primera Air?

We will be focusing specifically on the new routes by Primera Air Nordic, who use their Airbus A321neos to fly between New York Newark, Boston, Washington DC and Toronto-Pearson from London Stansted and Paris Charles de Gaulle. However, the press seems to indicate that the routes will be replaced by Boeing 737’s in the near future. It has also been announced that in 2019 they will be launching new routes (with their new 737maxs) from Brussels to Boston, Washington and New York.

Fellow aviation experts will realise that the current Boeing 737 can’t actually make it across the Atlantic and the new 737max will barely have any fuel to spare.

However, it has not all been rosy and customer praise, with many customers complaining about the airline’s customer service, management by cancelling flights last minute and lack of support. There is even a twitter account called @donotflyprimeva to vent these frustrations.

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@primeraair I am owed 1169,40EUR from Primera Air from a flight 2 months ago that was cancelled!! Nobody responds and service has been awful. — Yassine Boukadoum (@yboukadoum) August 30, 2018

I am getting really close to booking a flight to Latvia, showing up at Primera headquarters, and demanding my money—just on principle. — JFW (@JQ7791) August 30, 2018

@primeraair I’ve saved up for my trip to France for the past 10 years. I’ve never been out of the country before and this was going to be my first time leaving. You cancelled flight PF22 the morning of take off and ruined my entire trip. Please refund my flight asap. — Henry Velasquez (@HenryWVelasquez) August 30, 2018

This, of course, is very telling of an airlines quality, not when everything goes well, but what they offer when things go wrong. This reveals to us how they offer such cheap fares, as the airline practices what is called as ‘revenue management’.

“A key point of the budget airlines is that the ticket is only one part of their revenue picture, The ticket is just the milk at the back of the grocery store.” Lufthansa Group CEO Carsten Spohrto Business Insider

The airline offers a similar model to Norwegian, offering everything for sale (From headphones to meals to extra baggage), and thus allowing the airline to offer much cheaper fares. Plus, given that they pay their staff cheaper wages (only the bare minimum flight crew on board), fly to more remote cheaper airports at destinations and outsource their customer service to call centres in South East Asia.

It’s worth being said that so far there are no gotcha fees, like having to pay to check in, or a surprise at gate stowage cost (like Ryanair). Their menu is reasonably priced and they don’t try to upsell you on board the flight. Plus, you can ride with pride that they allow their crew to drink water for free.

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The Airbus A321neos have 182 economy seats on board, that are 18 inches wide and have 30-36 inches of pitch. For an additional fee, passengers can upgrade to premium economy, with 16 recliner seats on board that are 22 inches wide and have a seat pitch of 36 inches. All sets on board come with USB sockets, but only the premium has power outlets.

You can find a seat map here.

To wrap up, there also has been a bit of a situation occur. Recently they have had to swap out their Airbus for a Boeing 737-800 on their transatlantic route, that couldn’t even do the advertised non-stop route to New York. It has to land in Iceland for an extra 45 minutes to refuel!

“The reason behind the diversion is because Primera has next week swapped its Airbus A321neo aircraft, capable of flying 4000 nautical miles (7408 km, more than enough to reach the US eastern seaboard), for a Boeing 737, which has a range of just 2935 nautical miles (5435 km).– Traveller.com.au”

This has been falsely reported that Airbus has failed to deliver Primera’s new A321neos on time, and as such their new route launches have had to be serviced by Boeing 737s.

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In truth, however, this was an operational issue and they only replaced the aircraft for six rotations (And have now swapped back the original A321neos).

Essentially with Primera Air, for a flight that good of a deal you have to take with a grain of salt.