Brexit may be sprinkling uncertainty among some carriers but not Norwegian. It has made a flurry of announcements this week about its trans-Atlantic network.
Boston, which is already connected by Norwegian to London LGW and Paris CDG, will now also have a direct service to both Rome (4 flights a week) and Madrid (3 flights a week).
Norwegian will also begin flying between Gatwick and San Francisco and Miami. The San Francisco route will replace the existing Oakland service and Miami takes over from Fort Lauderdale as the Florida destination. Miami will be daily in contrast to the existing four times a week service to Fort Lauderdale.
Norwegian announced that the existing LGW to Los Angeles service would drop to one daily and that Chicago would be reduced to four times a week.
The three-times daily service between Norwegian and New York (JFK) continues.
Destination drives business travel flight decision-making and that makes route and schedule all-important to whether a carrier's offering is suitable for business travel programmes.
Although it stresses that both local regions will still be served, Norwegian's moving flights from Oakland to San Francisco and Fort Lauderdale to Miami highlights business travellers' conundrum.
Boston, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco and, to a lesser extent, Miami are all both leisure and business destinations. The San Francisco Bay area — Silicon Valley - is home to Google, the Apple campus, etc. The big tech companies are on the same side of the Bay as San Francisco, the Pacific side, so a transfer from SFO will be quicker than from Oakland.
However, the closest airport to Silicon Valley is undoubtedly San Jose to which British Airways launched a direct service in 2016.
It may be under 20 miles from SFO to Facebook's HQ in Menlo Park but it's less than 10 from San Jose airport. Google's Mountain View home is closer to San Jose too.
Business travellers want to spend the least possible time travelling between home/office and business meetings.
There's hefty competition on all of Norwegian's trans-Atlantic routes from carriers who have higher frequencies which naturally give more scheduling options.
Business travellers visit many, many different destinations but some are more popular than others. The gateway airports to which Norwegian flies may be some of the US's largest (with a nod to Dallas and Atlanta) but an enormous amount of business travel to the US is not point-to-point but requires connecting flights.
It's why carriers are in alliances with the Americans and Uniteds of this world. It's why Virgin Atlantic failed to make London-Chicago a successful route before it joined forces with Delta.
The long haul, low-cost business model has a few stumbling blocks that the short-haul market doesn't. As well as low distribution costs, the low-cost model relies on airports that do not charge carriers high fees (most hub airports do) and use the same aircraft across their entire fleet to keep repair and maintenance costs minimal.
Long-haul can't do that. And most importantly it can't offer its travellers whose final destination is not the first stop in the US, seamless connections to their final destination.
Norwegian's premium cabin gets excellent reviews so for those with flexible schedules who will conduct their business in LAX, SFO, ORD, BOS or New York itself, it will be a viable option.
But those who rely on using leverage to gain favourable fares and soft benefits are likely to remain loyal to the network carriers.
Those networks are invaluable.