Originally Posted by ObadiahDogberry

But that's just it, the different certificates play absolutely zero role in getting around labor laws. None whatsoever. A Norwegian pilot based in the UK was employed under the UK contract, regardless of whether they were assigned to the NAS, NUK, or NAI certificate. A Norwegian pilot based in Denmark was employed under the Danish labor contract, regardless of being assigned to NAS or NAI. A Norwegian pilot based in Oslo was employed under the Norwegian contract, regardless of being assigned to NAS, NAI, or NAN. The different certificate, and the country in which the certificate was based, played ZERO ROLE in the labor contract. It is just like how an SAS pilot based in Stockholm is employed under a Swedish labor contract, and represented by a Swedish union, while an SAS pilot based in Copenhagen is employed under a Danish labor contract and represented by a Danish union. If the different certificates affected the labor contracts, then the pilots would get different contracts when they got assigned to a different certificate, and that simply did not happen, ever.

The practice of having one unified pilot group, as is common in the States, just does not occur on the eastern side of the Atlantic. BA even has different labor contracts based upon the airport and fleet to which you are assigned, and a BA pilot can choose to be represented by BALPA or the IPA. When Aer Lingus had the Belfast crew base, those pilots were employed under a UK contract while the Dublin pilots were employed under an Irish contract.

The idea that you guys associate the different certificates with labor contracts is simply laughable. Where did you get that idea? The different certificates were about convenience for Norwegian, but labor had nothing to do with that convenience. The two biggest factors which led to the creation of NAI and NUK were securing traffic rights between Europe and different parts of the world (not the U.S. as Norwegian already had access to the U.S. market via the Open Skies treaty), and, in the case of NAI, tying those additional traffic rights in with the Cape Town Treaty which secured more favorable lease rates. When Sweden joined the treaty in 2015, NAI essentially became a moot point, and NAI was massively downsized after Norwegian launched the Swedish certificate, NSE. When Norwegian (mostly) shut down due to Covid, it was in the process of moving NAI assets over to NSE as the Swedish and Norwegian authorities had agreed to interoperability across certificates, meaning crews could seamlessly operate on either certificate without the need for a new line check, a crew could fly one sector on the NAS certificate, and the next sector on the NSE certificate. But again, labor contracts were not affected by the change whatsoever.

Quite simply put, again, in case some of you found this too complicated, the different certificates played no role at all in relation to labor. What affected labor was the location of where the crew was based. Due to EU laws (which in the case of aviation also cover the EEA countries like Norway and Iceland), crews could be based in any EU or EEA country, regardless of which certificate they operated under.

EDIT - Please don't take this as me defending Norwegian. They made a lot of glaring mistakes, many which could be seen miles away, even years ago. I am just truly baffled by why you are bashing Norwegian pilots. Perhaps the U.S. based pilots were guilty of something that I am not aware of. But as far as the guys on the European side, Norwegian pilots were just another group of pilots operating under pretty average union contracts.