The Norwegian Cockroach
 

Somehow, against all odds, Norwegian has once again cheated death. This morning, shareholders voted overwhelmingly in favor of the last set of steps required for Norwegian to secure all currently available state aid from the Norwegian government, and in the process has significantly reduced their outstanding debt. Reports out of Oslo now say the company is secure until the end of 2020 under the current operating plan (seven aircraft in operation). Going forward, the company will plan to run an operation that is about 40% smaller than the pre-Covid19 operation, with long haul operations concentrated in cities with the most profitable routes and with a more efficient staffing system. Long haul is not expected to come back until summer '21 at the earliest.

Norwegian is like cockroach, nothing can seem to kill it! LOL

Article is in Norwegian, but gives a decent summary so far:

https://www.dn.no/luftfart/norwegian...des/2-1-801870

Certainly interesting. Wonder what routes they will start with come 2021. Assume the London routes. Also, with everything going on, they might end up at Heathrow.

So will Norwegian be the next Alitalia?

No, that'll be Lufthansa. State owned and dumping union T&Cs at the same time.

The Norwegian gov't has decided to pull the plug on further financial support of DY.
Basically they accuse DY of lying to them earlier in the year in order to secure the initial bailout; the idea was they would shrink and focus on, well, Norway as a domestic carrier. Instead, DY had another plans for that money, leaving the Norwegian gov't none to pleased...
https://airwaysmag.com/airlines/gove...norwegian-air/

Norway as a domestic carrier? You were aware that the whole country only has a population somewhat over 5 million, with a million of those in Oslo itself? Spread out on 2000 inhabited islands?
And that by the time you get down to the tenth biggest “urban” area, you are talking under 50,000 population?

Once you get past the ten or twelve most populous areas a daily twin otter run would usually be more than adequate.

Norwegian was a domestic/regional carrier for nearly 20 years before launching international operations. Part of the geography is exactly why they need a domestic carrier. Widerøe is another, existed for nearly 90 years doing primarily Norway Ops.

Norway already has a pretty extensive domestic air network. a) they need it and b) they can afford it.

I think they mean domestic as intra Europe of which given the European common market is essentially the equivalent of what Americans think as “domestic”.

Out of interest, anyone know what SAS position is?

Horrible... They are pretty much cancelling everything.
All my friends working there have been let go, not furlough, they will have to re-apply. Everyone since 2001 has been let go, all while they are using SAS Ireland doing the flying.

Have friends on both sides of the SAS flying, and none of them are working. A British friend was a senior TRI/TRE at SAS Ireland, one of the first hired, and he is still not back to work yet. So SAS Ireland is not doing much flying either. Flying out of CPH yesterday, I did not see one EI registered A320, they were all SE/OY registered. So not all of it is going to SAIL.

Why are you asking me? I didn't write the article, boomer.

No, but you posted it. If you didn’t think it was valid, why did you inflict it on the rest of us?

and get off my lawn, sonny...

Ireland certainly seems to attract a lot of random air carriers these days. Kind of like Liberia in the shipping industry.

Won't be sad to see them go... their kind of regulatory and labor shell game would be a very bad precedent. Probably more for Europe than the US.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidni...h=50d290671ecd

Looks like their only paths forward are liquidation or conversion to a narrow domestic focus. Their global days are over, hopefully for good. If the Norwegians want their flight crews and mx outsourced through offshore shell companies, that's their business, they can keep it.

Looks like a walk along the edge of a cliff. Without being cruel to the people, another company going away would simply strengthen the survivors, when Covid-19 recovery is a distant memory. May the winds blow off the cliff.

Every airline in Europe operates that way. They all have multiple certificates, with multiple contracts, through multiple sourcing companies.

BTW, the pilot contracts have nothing to do with where the certificate or holding company is located, it has to do with where the crew is actually based. SAS crews in Copenhagen operate under a different contract and different union than SAS crews in Stockholm, and both are different than the contract and union the SAS crews based in Oslo operate under. NAI 737 crews who were based in Copenhagen operated under the same union and contract as NAS 737 crews based in Copenhagen. NAS crews based in Copenhagen operate under different contracts and unions than the NAS crews based in Oslo. British Airways A320 pilots based in Gatwick operate under a different contract than British Airways A320 pilots based in Heathrow even though they operate under the same union. A senior BA 747 FO based in Heathrow would lose his or her job before a more junior A320 FO based in Gatwick simply because of where the fleet reductions were coming from. When Aer Lingus has crews based in Belfast, they operated under a different contract and union than the crews based in Dublin.

Not defending the system at all. But Europe is a VERY different animal than the US. Most US pilots would not recognize how things work over here with regards to union contracts, seniority, bidding, etc.

So what’s the consensus? Is the Irish court going to help them out or are they in for liquidation? What are the odds of another company (say SAS) buying the company?

What is being said among the members of Danish pilot union (FPU), the Irish court gives them the best chance for reorganization. My own personal opinion is that they will survive in some fashion, but it will not look anything like the pre-2019 Norwegian. It should be noted that in 2019, upper management was completely replaced. Word is that the new CEO was not a fan of the shell game set up and was beginning to simplify the structure before Covid hit.

Their latest shareholder meeting this month may keep them alive for a while longer as long as Norwegian is able to convert its debt to equity.
They did a 100:1 reverse stock split to keep the stock priced more than a penny. We'll see how long the stock price holds up. Even after that was done, the stock cratered 20% on Friday.
They plan on issuing more stock, but that plan falls apart if the stock keeps falling.
They need to issue more stock to recapitalize because they'll run out of cash sometime in Q1 2021.
Their special meeting even had the company paying their executives in stock rather than cash.

Now Wizz Air is flying in Norway, undercutting Norwegian fares. Wizz Air Launches Domestic Norwegian Flights - Simple Flying

In addition to filing for bankruptcy in Ireland, their Norwegian subsidiary also filed bankruptcy in Norway. I suppose it's possible for Norwegian to emerge from bankruptcy, but if they do, they will likely be a much smaller airline. I don't see them flying another transatlantic flight.

Summer, 2021 is a long ways off... However, vaccines... LAS, LA, NY... ORL may be a lot closer.

Maybe the end game...

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/...thout-cash-aid

Almost two months old. Since then they’d secured creditor protection from both the Irish and Norwegian courts. Still, it’s not looking good long term for them. Wizz Air is starting intra-Norway routes as well.

Norwegian is getting rid of all of its 787s. Norwegian Air Gives Up Long-Haul Flying in Plan to Exit Insolvency - Bloomberg

Ding Dong, the witch is dead!

I'm happy with that, as long as they keep their ultra-low budget outsourcing shell game scheme within their own borders.

Yeah... read the news yesterday.

Thoughts and prayers :rolleyes:

Who did they outsource to?

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.