Norwegian Air is using its public relations machine to offer any counter-arguments or enhanced explanations in media stories regarding its plan to offer low-fare long-haul flights - including TravelPulse!
After we published a story entitled "5 Ways Norwegian Air is Irking the Heck out of U.S. Airlines," the carrier's Communications Manager, Lasse Sandaker-Nielsen, sent us a polite email asking to respond to two of the points.
Norwegian had just received approval from Republic of Ireland regulators last week to base a long-haul subsidiary in Dublin to service trans-Atlantic destinations in the U.S. But U.S.-based carriers and the Airline Pilots Association have strenuously objected to the plan, saying in part that the low-cost carrier would create an economic imbalance in the market while intimating that Norwegian Air is skirting local labor laws by moving its base to Ireland.
Mr. Sandaker-Nielsen asked to comment on two points, in bold below, followed by Norwegian's responses in italics.
5. Norwegian will be basing its long-haul operations in Dublin. It has no interest in actually flying into or out of Dublin. The move, critics say, is generally seen as a safe harbor that allows the airline to circumvent labor laws in Scandanavian countries, hence Norway's displeasure.
"The relocating of Norwegian's long-haul company to Ireland has nothing to do with 'circumvention of labor laws.' Norwegian has established its long-haul company in Dublin for several reasons. The main reason is access to future traffic rights to and from the EU. Norwegian has more than 260 aircraft on order and the route network will expand rapidly in the years to come.
"Another important reason for choosing Ireland, and not another country within the EU (though several other European countries - including the UK and Sweden - were considered), is because Ireland has decided to fully adapt the Cape Town Convention, which provides Norwegian with better financing conditions. Furthermore, the establishment in Ireland does not affect export guarantees in connection with our financing. As well as offering one of the highest ranked civil aviation authorities in the world, Ireland is also a considerable cluster for the aviation industry; major leasing companies that Norwegian cooperates with have offices in Dublin.
"It is important to stress that Ireland was not chosen because the country has specific rules and regulations that allow the use of American or Asian crew, like some politicians and unions have claimed. The fact is that Norwegian could have based its long-haul company in any other European country and still used American and Asian crew, the way several other European airlines have been operating for years. The only exception is Norway and partly Denmark, who so far have opted to keep outdated special rules within this area."
4. And what labor laws are those? Well, Norwegian is a low-cost carrier and it plans to employ that strategy on its new trans-Atlantic flights by hiring "freelancers" - pilots and crew based in the U.S. and Thailand that can and will work for far less money than union pilots. More than one critic has dubbed Norwegian Air "Air WalMart."
"This is a pretty serious allegation. We don't hire 'freelancers.' Norwegian hires crew on a permanent basis through renowned and experienced agencies. All employees are offered competitive wages and conditions and we naturally follow all local rules and regulations. Do you think that we would have received 5,500 applications for 300 cabin crew jobs in the U.S. if our conditions weren't competitive? Several of our new cabin crew at JFK and FLL have previous experience from airlines such as United, British Airways and American."
It will be interesting to see how this all plays out going forward. We appreciate Mr. Sandaker-Nielsen taking the time to read the story and respond with Norwegian Air's position.
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