SayAlt

You seem to know a lot about all these new startups. How are they funded? Are they getting gov't subsidies like the ME airlines are?

SayAlt

So is your retort.

Justdoinmyjob

Umm, they are an Icelandic company, based in Iceland, an EU country utilizing the provisions of the U.S.-EU Open Skies agreement.

NAI, is a Norwegian company, but Norway is not part of the EU, so they cannot fly under the U.S.-EU Open Skies agreement. However, by using an Irish Air Certificate, Ireland being a part of the EU, they are effectively side stepping the Open Skies question.

If NAI were to use EU pilots, flying on a Norwegian air carrier certificate, as long as they met the provisions of the U.S.-Norwegian air carrier agreement, no one would have an issue with that and would just have to deal with it competitively.

bedrock

This is globalization, folks. Corporations want to be able to pick and choose the locations that benefit them best in various aspects. Choose the country with the easiest labor laws, choose the country with the best rule of law, choose the country with lowest taxes, etc.

Other multinationals are pursuing corporate inversions whereby they buy a foreign subsidiary and can still be a US based company and have access to laws that benefit the company and have US share holders. Yet, they pay much lower tax, based on the foreign subsidiary's location.


CEO's take on huge debt to buy back stock, in order to raise stock prices and their bonuses. Accountants are able to "estimate" a huge loss, take a tax write-off and then when the loss doesn't happen, they claim a profit based on what they lost.

Wall Street works overtime to game the system and bribe it's deals through. The system is completely corrupt if you can pay.

Republican-Democrat doesn't matter.

Arvik

This approval is only for their Irish certificate. They've got other certificates as well; a Norwegian one, a British one, and perhaps a Spanish one. They fly to the US under those certificates.

The reason the Irish certificate has been under extra scrutiny is because Ireland allows additional outsourcing that the other countries do not. That's where the flag of convenience issue comes into play (and that's the real issue here, not the payscales).

full of luv

That would actually be fine.... a British company following British labor law and complying with British regulations.

What NAI wants to do is basically what the cargo ship industry has done over the last 50 years, find a country that will register your ship with lax oversight to include labor, mx and regulation. Then undercut all of the "over regulated" economies you can find.

full of luv

It's not even really just about the pilots (although I know that's our number one concern). It's the whole operation being run as a Flag of Convenience carrier from Ireland (where they don't even plan to serve with their LCC model). How is proper oversight of a carrier supposed to take place if the carrier doesn't even land in your country?

The planes you see now are from NAI in Norway, and fly according to the laws and customs (and taxes) of Norway. That's too confining if you want to offer seats across the atlantic for $50 plus fees....

captjns

What incentive does NAI have to increase wages, terms and conditions or QOL if they are able to get pilots who are willing to work on the cheap?

Even pilots in the U.S. work on the cheap. Only per Diem during training?

GangtaMoose

i cant keep up with alpas boogeyman. i thought it was me3 carriers but i guess we are now back to norwegian. will stand by for an alpa email to tell me what to be scared of next.

Papoo

I can't decide how vehemently opposed to this I am, if at all.

I reckon if their name didn't have the word 'Norwegian' in it, there would be lot less chatter. It would just become another LoCo. The pilots are poorly paid, and free-market believers should stick to their belief, that the market would speak, both in terms of employees and customers.

To comment on the supposedly poor pay at somewhere like Virgin Atlantic; For a long time since all the bankruptcy carnage in the US, coupled with a very weak US Dollar, the US legacy pilots were paid way inferior wages compared to BA/Virgin/Lufthansa etc. A BA Captain was making $360,000, Virgin about $310,000 (for a 750 hours per yer contract) while the US guys had their pay slashed to 200 bucks an hour. Tens of thousands of US legacy pilots lost their jobs.

Nothing changed in the UK contracts - other than some inflationary adjustments. Thankfully the US guys have received long overdue pay raises, and let's not forget, the USD has strengthened 30% relative to the GBP, and moreso against the Euro. It's hard to compare apples with oranges, but in terms of multiples of median incomes, the guys in the major UK carriers are still on point.

I hate the idea of what's happening, but it's hard to argue against, because as protectionist as we all are of our profession, this is a free market move. Yes, it circumvents various laws - that is the intent. In a free market, that is NAI's prerogative. I think it sucks, because 'free market' enables the race to the bottom. But, the general APC consensus is a pretty conservative one from what I read, so it's mildly hypocritical to hear the outcry.

Dot get me wrong, I am all in favour of this crap being annihilated, and wish to see all conditions head north, but to do that in the free market means that you guys have to provide a better product at better prices, to match the market and squeeze out NAI. At the moment, trans-Atlantic on an NAI 787 is a far more pleasant prospect than economy on a US carrier. That's a sad fact. If the Cost base of the US carrier is too high to compete profitably, then that is free market, too. Dinosaurs die.

If you look at what it costs someone like Air France/Lufthansa to employ a pilot, with all of the social taxes the company bears, they could cry bloody murder at the unfair competitive advantage held in the US. This is globalisation; you can't just cherry pick one example.

I hate it, and I won't use them on principle, but then again, the rest of the market compares product against price. If it's expensive and **** - as per the current US offerings, then you'll need to adapt.

Look at the success Delta is having by tightly controlling international capacity, but becoming a domestic juggernaut. Their product doesn't compete at a price they're happy to sell at, so they have adapted.

Again, crying foul on JV/scope sounds great from a unionised perspective, but ultimately if it makes the company money, they will do it. In the long run, it's more damaging to the company if they continue to deploy their own capacity of rubbish, whereby they can't compete with their overseas competition.

Ultimately, the US and EU legacies have the balance sheets & ability to undercut and drive NAI out of the markets in which they compete. Whether they will or not remains to be seen. I hope they do, but your wishes and JV talk won't make the blindest bit of difference.