Not going to defend Norwegian, but clearly there is some misconception about how Norwegian worked. Norwegian pilots were employed based upon the country in which they were based. Pilots were not employed under contract with a certain certificate. In other words, pilots did not get hired by NAI when the could have been hired by NAS. Instead, they were hired by Norwegian, and they were offered a contract based upon the country in which they were based. Then Norwegian would assign them to the NAS certificate, the NAI certificate, or maybe even the NUK certificate. For example, a Norwegian pilot hired as a 737 first officer, based in Copenhagen, would be put on the Norwegian master seniority list based upon date of hire, and they would be offered a Denmark based contract and be represented by the Danish pilot union FPU (Flyvebranchens Personale Union). Then they could have been assigned to either the NAI certificate or the NAS certificate. But their contract and union representation did not change because of the AOC, and in fact many Norwegian pilots did switch between AOCs regularly. The same thing happened when NAS opened the NUK certificate for the 787. NAS 787 pilots who were based at Gatwick were on a UK employment contract, and most of the pilots were represented by BALPA. When Norwegian started NUK operations (aka "RedNose" callsign), the pilots were swapped over to being qualified under the NUK AOC. But their contract, contract terms, union representation, and place on the Norwegian seniority list did not change at all. A LGW based NUK 787 pilot could bid for a NAS 787 CDG base when a vacancy came open, and vice versa.

 

Lots of word salad, no idea what any of it means. Don't really care. The fact is for US pilots this pig of an operation undercut our labor and work rules and lowered the bar for all international carriers. Glad they're done.

 

Yawn. There you are.

 

Yes, I think that was the whole point... can't be good for labor if you can't even explain who you work for, and where.

 

Was really not that complicated. Sorry it was too confusing for you.

 

Don't know much about how it worked on the U.S. side. But the set up is quite common on the European side, even among the large legacy carriers. A lot of it comes with the territory of being a part of the EU and EEA in which the countries have more autonomy than U.S. States, but less than completely independent countries.

 

As others said, it doesn't matter because of the whole flag of convenience BS. Norwegian was able to dodge labor & tax laws via some creative hiring/basing schemes and undercut other airlines by doing so. Good riddance.

 

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.

 

Dude, the point you're trying to prove, none of which I spent the time to read is moot. They're gone. Good.

 

I am really sorry that was too complex and long for you. Kind of mind boggling that it is, but okay, if you say so.

So far my prediction is holding true, they aren't gone yet, but looking like they will be a far smaller shell of their former selves. Their niche was, and should be again, the Scandinavian and Northern European short haul market.