After years of planning and postponements, Atlantic Airways (RC, Faroe Islands Vágar) will commence its first transatlantic services to the United States at the end of summer, launching scheduled flights between the Faroe Islands and New York, the carrier’s CEO, Jóhanna á Bergi, has told the Faroese national radio broadcaster Kringvarp Føroya.

The chief executive said that the airline would offer direct flights between Vágar and Newburgh (New York Stewart) International Airport on a weekly basis as of late August 2023. Newburgh is located about 100 kilometres north of Manhattan, a journey of around 90 minutes by bus or 75 minutes by car.

Initially, the plan was to fly to New York Newark, which is much closer to downtown New York, as Jóhanna á Bergi told ch-aviation in October 2019. That objective was shelved with the onset of the pandemic and then reassessed.

“Just about everything is confirmed now, and we expect to start this new route in late August,” she told the radio station. “We’re planning to start with seven weekly departures from the Faroes on Tuesdays, then we will be aiming to expand the route next year.”

Atlantic Airways confirmed the new route on its website, saying it would operate “on Tuesdays from August 22 to around October 4, and the return flight will be on Wednesdays. The flight time will be around six hours. Sales start on May 15.”

Key to opening up services to the United States has been obtaining the A320neo. Atlantic Airways currently operates two A320-200N, both of which are dry-leased from Air Lease Corporation, the ch-aviation fleets module shows. Two A320-200s round off its fleet, plus a third A320ceo wet-leased from DAT (Denmark) subsidiary DAT (R6, Kaunas International). In April 2021, Atlantic Airways said it had postponed the delivery of two more A320neo from 2023 or 2024 to 2027 or 2028.

According to the ch-aviation capacities module, the airline currently operates eight routes, from Vágar to Copenhagen Kastrup (21x weekly), Billund (5x weekly), Paris CDG (3x weekly), Edinburgh, Reykjavik Keflavik (both 2x weekly), Gran Canaria, and Aalborg (both 1x weekly).