OSLO: Norwegian made another attempt at asking the US Department of Transportation (DOT) to allow its Irish-registered subsidiary, Norwegian Air International (NAI), to operate transatlantic routes under the EU-US open skies agreement. NAI’s case, filed in Dec-2013 and completed in Feb-2014, has been pending for longer than any other such application.
To address its opponents’ stated concerns that NAI is a “flag of convenience”, whose only purpose is “social dumping”, Norwegian now says that it will employ pilots and cabin crew only from Europe and the US. If there was a clear reason to deny the application, surely this would have been decided by now. Many informed parties, including the European Commission, the lead negotiators of the EU-US agreement, consumer and trade organisations and competitor airlines do not believe that there is such a reason.
Meanwhile the DOT has allowed itself to be hijacked by the anti-competitive agenda of the Big Three US airlines and a number of labour unions. In this report, we outline the arguments surrounding this case. In a second part, we will look at the impact of Norwegian’s transatlantic operations on competitors’ traffic share.
NAI’s plea at the start of Jun-2015 that the US Department of Transportation make a decision came 15 months after its original application. It sparked a series of responses from both opponents and supporters. Most of the arguments on both sides are well worn and it seems that the latest development has merely further entrenched the respective views.
