Northern Pacific Airways, the Icelandair of the Pacific?

The unveiling! This was the first public presentation of Northern Pacific Airways’ livery.

While it is common in the tech industry to refer to an already existing company to describe the business model of a new startup (“it’s like Uber for X”… “it’s like AirBnB for Y”), this is not the case in aviation. Nevertheless, when thinking about the most straightforward way to describe this new American carrier, I couldn’t come up with a better parallel.

And it is not that their founders are denying the charge! In fact, the Icelandair parallel was well present during the airline’s presentation in San Bernardino, California, just a few days ago. The event even counter a senior executive from Loftleidir (Icelandair’s parent company) among the guests of honour.

So, as simple as that: Northern Pacific Airways will connect the US to East Asia by way of Alaska and, in the process, it is going to try to lure some travellers to prolongue their stopover and spend some days exploring America’s largest and northernmost state.

Rob McKinney, CEO of Northern Pacific Airways

Those attending the airline’s presentation in California had the chance to interview some of Northern Pacific Airways’ key executive, starting by its CEO, Rob McKinney, and learn more details about this project.

The airline is still a few months away from launch, but the first aircraft, livery and brand were presented. Even the Boeing 757 brings Icelandair back to mind. This is certainly not a state-of-the-art aircraft, but one that, as the airline’s CEO put it, allows them to get started without delay. “If we had to wait a bit longer to get a factory-new airplane, we may find that, by the time we all is ready, the window of opportunity has already closed” he explained. The plan is to start with 12 Boeing 757s (of which 9 are already contracted).

Mr Kinney mentioned that they may consider switching to other aircraft types in the medium to long term as the project gets consolidated. The goal is to grow the fleet to 50 aircraft within a few years time.

The 4,000nm range of the B757 places most of the continental US within range. New York (JFK), Los Angeles (LAX), San Francisco, Orlando and Las Vegas are going to be the Northern Pacific’s first North American destinations. On the Asian side of the network it is going to be Tokyo, Osaka, Nagoya and Seoul. Harbin, China, is potentially within range and this is an option that is being considered for when circumstances permit.

To get to destinations further south, including most of mainland China, Hong Kong and South East Asia, Northern Pacific will have to wait until it was some longer range aircraft. Another area that is already within range is Russia’s Pacific coast, but Mr. McKinney confirmed there are no plans to fly there for now.

“Some of these cities have limited nonstop trans-Pacific service, so, if you have to do a stopover somewhere, why don’t do it in Alaska” the airline’s CEO explained in an interview just before the event’s kick off.

So what are the Unique Selling Points (USPs) that Northern Pacific hopes to bring to the very competitive trans-Pacific market. Let’s see:

Price: Northern Pacific plans to offer prices below the current average rates for nonstop flights. The airline will not be a pure low cost carrier, though, since it is planning to offer a three tier service, with an economy, economy+ and business classes. Rather than capturing market share from established players, Northern Pacific Airways aims to expand the market by making trans-Pacific travel more accessible to new publics.

Inflight experience: although not many details are known, passengers will, in the word, of Mr Kinney, enjoy a superb inflight entertainment offering. Also, several food and drink companies are already partnering with Northern Pacific to offer high quality catering and refreshments onboard.

The seats, of which we were able to see a sample at the event (below), have been designed by ACLA, a young and innovative cabin design studio based in LA whose founders, Victor Carlioz and Matt Cleary, I had the chance to interview on the podcast over a year ago!

The Alaska stopover: this is, in my opinion, the most unique asset that Northern Pacific brings to the table and one for which they count with two multiplier factors.

First, is that the airline is working closely with tourism authorities in Alaska to devise a number of products and activities that turn the necessary stopover into a plus. In their favour they have the magnificence (and exotic cool!) of Alaska’s nature. This is another trick from the Icelandic playbook (see for example my piece about Icelandair’s Stopover Buddy programme)

Second, is that the Northern Pacific is a sister company of Ravn, the Alaskan regional airline with whom it shares owners. It is not hard to imagine how the two airlines can work in tandem, not only to feed each other’s flights, but also to facilitate and expand the opportunities for “stopover tourism” through their Anchorage hub.

Finally, another aspect of the Northern Pacific Airways’ product that I found interesting is that, together with Ravn, it is going to offer a crypto-based loyalty scheme called Flycoin, which has been created by one of the airlines’ shareholders. I know we are at a stage at which it is difficult to tell apart solid crypto projects from meme-coins, but some of the underlying principles of flycoin seem quite interesting, such as its theoretical durability and transferability, which may limit the arbitrariness of some traditional loyalty programmes…but this is possibly a topic for another, longer piece.