There were strange goings-on at Gatwick last week. Balloons and streamers adorned gate 18. Nice ladies with name tags and neck scarves handed round blueberry muffins and thimbles of buck’s fizz. This is air travel, but not as we’ve come to know it. The reason for all this bonhomie? The first low-cost, no-frills flight to New York from London for 20 years, courtesy of the Canadian carrier Zoom.

You may not be as familiar with Zoom as you are with EasyJet, Ryanair and their ilk, but if Scottish brothers Hugh and John Boyle get their way, you soon will be. The pair have been in the travel industry since 1975, and set up Zoom Airlines in Canada in 2002, with flights from Ottawa to the Caribbean, Mexico and the southern USA. In the UK, it has been flying from Gatwick, Stansted and Glasgow to Canada since 2004.

On Zoom’s new route, a one-way seat in economy to JFK airport starts at £129. Yes, for the same price as a meal for two (no drinks, not even mineral water) at Gordon Ramsay at Claridge’s, you can be on your way to making rash decisions in Bloomingdale’s just because you can’t believe how cheap it all is.

I couldn’t resist, and jumped on the first flight. A rash decision? Well, the plane is fine – good, even. The seats feel roomy, though whether they’re wide enough for a whole American remains to be seen. Most of my fellow passengers in economy seem to be asleep, curled up in their Zoom Airline blankets (yours for £3), which suggests that they are not finding the accommodation too painful. The staff are excellent, if undoubtedly on their best behaviour for the virgin voyage. Toilets are regularly inspected, paper towels restocked. There’s a big bottle of worcestershire sauce going up and down the aisle, livening up the bloody marys (£3). So far, so good.

The only thing letting the side down is the rather mushy veg that accompanied the roast chicken dinner. But we’ve already established that this isn’t Claridge’s. Aside from that, and the fact that I’ve just sat through I Think I Love My Wife, starring Chris Rock – possibly the worst film ever made – this is looking like £129 well spent. But how likely are you to pay just £129? When I checked on Zoom’s website, a week before the first flight, prices for an economy ticket were fluctuating between £129 and £179.

“That £129 is just the list price,” Zoom said. “An average of 25% of seats on every flight, on or off peak, is guaranteed to be available at that price, and it goes up from there. It all depends on demand and availability.” Another source at Zoom said that, in practical terms, economy seats will not exceed £299. But we’ll have to see.

Let’s do the maths. Zoom uses Boeing 767-300 ER wide-bodied planes with 266 seats: 84 of those are in premium economy, leaving 182 seats in economy, of which only a quarter (45) are definitely available for £129. Hmm.

And what exactly do you get for the money? The seat pitch is a pretty standard 31in, the baggage allowance a slightly mean 20kg. (BA offers 24kg.) For the show-offs in premium economy, things are more civilised: an extra five inches of seat pitch, 30kg baggage allowance, adjustable head and foot rests, a separate check-in desk, complimentary in-flight entertainment headsets (£3 to the £129ers), an enhanced meal service, with a choice of three hot mains (the £129 crowd get two), and free alcoholic drinks.

The price for all this? A week before the first flight, premium seats cost from £208, with prices going up to £258. That’s still cheaper than the competition’s economy seats: on a web search last week, the best we could find with BA and Virgin was £272.

(It’s worth noting that on Sundays and Wednesdays, the quietest days of the week for flights out of London, the Zoom flight stops off in Bermuda, adding between 90 minutes and two hours to your journey time.)

FREDDIE LAKER started this low-cost, no-frills business to the States with Laker Airways’ first transatlantic flight, in 1977. Five years later, the airline was bankrupt. Peoplexpress was next, in 1983, and three years later it went to the wall. Why should Zoom be any different? Its MD, Jonathan Hinkles, explains that the flying public is the reason for the airline’s confidence. “The market has come an awfully long way in the past 20 years,” he says. “Low-cost carriers are a much more accepted part of the traveller’s psyche, and EasyJet and Ryanair have done a great job of conditioning people to booking online.”

So, if it’s all about the customers, let’s ask them what they think. An unscientific survey of 12 economy passengers revealed that all would use this flight again. Most thought it excellent value, though there were rumblings from some that they had paid considerably more than the heavily advertised £129 figure. Still, I would have to agree with the majority – I would fly Zoom to New York again. I just wouldn’t watch the movie.

Travel details: Zoom’s winter schedule, flying direct five times a week between Gatwick and New York, is now fixed. Flights up to August 2008 will be available within the next six weeks. Visit www.flyzoom.com .

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