Bye now.....

 

Where are you going?

 

But Norway isn’t part of the EU.... so wouldn’t the fact that they use cheaper labor by utilizing labor they can source through EU countries make them flag of convenience?

 

This has been covered many times. Norway, while not part of the EU, is part of the EEA. This means they must comply with all aspects of the EU common market, including labour laws, but are excluded from having to comply with fishing and agricultural laws. As citizens from all EU/EEA countries, plus Switzerland (CH), have equal right to live and work in any area of the EU/EEA+CH, and the Open Skies Treaty plus internal EU/EEA laws gives Norwegian the right to operate any EU/EEA city to the United States, from a labour perspective there is nothing to be gained by opening an AOC in another EU/EEA country. Any EU/EEA airline (in fact any EU/EEA corporation in any industry) can hire anyone from the EU/EEA+CH, and base them anywhere in the EU/EEA. In short, being in an EEA country, Norwegian corporations already have full access to the EU labour market. A new AOC is not required to achieve that.

 

Go away NAI.

 

All the carriers you listed were originally established by entities in their operational countries and were later acquired by other EU owners whose intent was NOT "to avoid regulations of their home country."

Nice try, but no cigar.

 

What regulations do you think Norwegian is escaping by operating EU registered companies that are operated under EASA regulations?

 

Actually, that is exactly what happened in the case of all of the carriers that were acquired by Lufthansa Group. They did get into Austrian, Brussels and Swiss not only to get the market, which in the case of Brussels they are now starting to give up. They did get in their to use the much less strict labour laws in those countries. And even used illegal tactics to lower those T&Cs even more. Funny enough, they T&Cs at those carriers are around half or less of what their Lufthansa counterparts earn, and in doing so they put massive pressure on Lufthansa mainline as well, which has just last december been forced to lower their own T&Cs by roughly 15% in the best time for the airline ever. Flags of convenience right there with very real results. Of course, even more so through the pressure of Eurowings which has even worse T&Cs and is mainly based on an austrian company, expressively build to avoid german labor laws, and Brussels who is employing nowadays nearly only contractors on the former Ryanair model.

What NEDude is referring to is of course the fact that Norway is part of the european single market (with absolutely no say in the rules of that market) and for aviation therefore part of EASA. It has to follow all the EU rules, has to pay for access to that market, and can not vote on those rules. Why the heck they do that, having to follow rules they cannot influence, is beyond me, but it works for them.

 

What I find humorous is that so many people think Norwegian needs NAI or NUK in order to escape Norwegian labor laws. When the fact is everything they are doing, such as the temporary contracts, the crew base in Thailand (which is no longer available BTW), etc. is 100% legal under Norwegian laws. Norwegian did all of those things under their Norwegian AOC, not under NAI or NUK.

Also totally disregarded is that because of the multiple AOCs, Norwegian crews and employment is governed under more sets of regulations, not less. They are not only governed by the laws of the country where the AOC is located, they are governed under the laws of the country where they are based, where their contract agency is based, the EU and EASA. So a NAS pilot based in Paris, under a Global Crew UK contract, is governed under French regulations, Norwegian regulations, UK regulations, EU regulations, and EASA regulations. If Norwegian were to use the Argentinean AOC to hire non-EU/EEA/CH nationals, base them in Europe, and then used them to operate EU-US routes, you'd be on to something. But that would be in violation of EU laws and in violation of the US-EU Open Skies treaty.

What I also find funny is that now the argument is being made (by Flytolive) that it is totally okay to buy an airline for the purpose of escaping home country regulations, it is just not okay to start one from scratch.

 

You make some strong points. I have heard scope protections are relatively non-existent compared to U.S. airlines so carriers like Lufthansa with all their wholly owned subsidiaries are quite vulnerable. It sounds to me like the EU itself is much of the issue from our perspective.

If the EASA is anything like the FAA is probably irrelevant from a business perspective.