European airline will take travellers for a one-day shopping trip in New York

If your ideal holiday is shopping in New York but you don’t have the time for a trip, just wait. A European airline will bring Irish travellers to the Big Apple just long enough for a shopping spree.

Budget airline Norwegian Air has announced its plans to double the number of flights between Dublin and Stewart International Airport in New York State to twice a day. While the initial reports were that the flights will start in spring, Norwegian now says: “while we have exciting plans to introduce double daily flights from Dublin to New York, we have decided to put the additional flights on sale at a later date”.

However, once the flights take off, they will likely be a shopaholic’s dream. While the airport is actually more than an hour’s drive away from Manhattan shopping on Fifth Avenue, the flights arrive in time to get a shuttle from the airport to the premium outlet centre Woodbury Common and return the same day. The outlet mall features shops like Chloe, Dior, Coach, Marc Jacobs, Jimmy Choo, Kate Spade, Ralph Lauren and more.

The roughly six-hour flights will leave from Dublin at 8:30 am – and thanks to a handy time change, will set down travellers at 10:30 am local time. If travellers head to Woodbury Common on the shuttle, they can make it back with three hours to catch the evening flight back to Dublin. Of course, that sort of day might mean travellers would actually shop until they drop – so you could always turn it into a longer holiday in the Big Apple.

But the flights won’t just help Irish shoppers get to the city – it will also give US travellers another opportunity each day to fly to Ireland. Norwegian Air International – which is an Ireland-based subsidiary of Norwegian Air Shuttle – has been flying to the Eastern US from Europe since last summer.