Norwegian borrowed the same play book Michael O'Leary (of Ryanair) used ~6 years earlier: putting in a big, bold order for new Boeing aircraft just as the aviation market was tanking (due to 9/11 in O'Leary's case and the GFC in Norwegian's). Anti-cycle is the cheapest time to buy lots of new planes (if you have the balls and investor backing to do it).
Underneath it all is the same operating model that allowed low cost carriers to flourish in the short-haul market: streamlined, standardized, modern, fuel efficient fleet; non-unionised crews; using cheaper secondary airports; flying direct; cramming in as many rotations in 24 hours as possible and flying outside of peak hours to get cheaper landing slots.
The new Boeing and Airbus models make the LCC approach increasingly viable for longer haul routes thanks to big fuel efficiency improvements and smarter cabin interiors/materials that boost pax load without sacrificing comfort. Oil prices are also helping since the price has remained low for so long now that even if an airline hedged the wrong way a few years ago they're now all enjoying better rates.
IAG (British Airways, Iberia) and Lufthansa are trying to get in on the action too with Level and Eurowings respectively.
A big difference with Ryanair and other low-cost airlines is that Norwegian stays away from dark UI patterns in their website/app, and also doesn't use the "make it uncomfortable enough that you consider paying more, but not so uncomfortable that it stops you from using it" tactics in general. I think they'll be much better at customer retention.
Perhaps where Norwegian and Ryanair compete on the same routes (which isn't many). But even then, if there's more than a €10 difference in the headline price, most LCC flyers will pick the cheaper one regardless. I think just like with blindness to banner ads on websites, most consumers quickly learn to avoid the dark patterns during check out.
To be honest, Ryanair's new web app is actually not that bad compared to the hostile site they had a few years back.
Ryanair's new web app is actually not that bad compared
to the hostile site they had a few years back
Which is roughly when they refocused on customer-service, when their previous customer-hostile approach generated enough negative publicity to threaten their business model.
Threatening their business model is overstating it a bit I think. More like they had already successfully picked all the low hanging fruit and in order to maintain their stellar (multi) year-on-year passenger growth they needed to start trying other things (customer experience improvement, more focus on business flyers, serving more primary airports, dipping their toes in to offering a few connecting flights).
Short-haul LCC traffic in Europe is becoming a mature market and so budget airlines are on a drive to find ways to grow beyond simply offering "insanely cheap prices". However, it's important to remember that a bad/hostile customer experience didn't stop Ryanair getting to ~100 million passengers a year (note: not that I'm defending that!).
As I stated in another comment: I'd never pick Ryanair over Norwegian, even as LCC flyer. I had flights with Norwegian where paying €100 more than with Ryanair was well worth it for the time I'd lose going to/from airports and the hassle it'd be to be sure I'd done everything against the dark patterns of Ryanair.
I really can't see myself getting a Ryanair flight to anywhere where I could get Norwegian, airBerlin, or other LCC that aren't as cheap as "Fly for €6.99" but at least treat you well.
You aren't kidding. We did a family vacation in Europe last year, and relied primarily on LCC's to do side trips. Buying tickets was like clicking through a Facebook clickbait story - packed with ads and confusingly named links that would add charges to your flight.
You pay extra for: checking luggage, carrying on luggage, selecting your seat in advance, selecting any seat that's not a middle seat.
And then -- for most LCC's, you MUST print your boarding pass at home, or pay a 50 Eur service fee. And many of them make you check in your own luggage, all the way to the belt.
> And many of them make you check in your own luggage, all the way to the belt.
Is this uncommon in the US?
I'd much rather enter the airport, casually walk up to a touchscreen, print my boarding pass and label and drop off my baggage than queuing up in a long line when the check-in counter opens.
In the USA, it's not uncommon to check in at home and/or print your own boarding pass. It's far less common to print and attach your own luggage tags - United does it at SFO. However, US airline regs require that an employee checks your ID and compares it to the boarding pass before accepting luggage - so there's always a human in the loop.
However - a lot of Americans still aren't comfortable with this level of self-service, and want to go to a full-service counter.
What I was referring to specifically with LCC's is that they have zero personnel at the check-in counter -- self-checking your luggage isn't a nice option, it's mandatory. And there's not even a kiosk for printing your boarding pass (that would cost money to maintain, best to have you use your own paper and toner at home).
> You pay extra for: checking luggage, carrying on luggage, selecting your seat in advance, selecting any seat that's not a middle seat.
Well, you do. But you're subsidising regular LCC users like myself :) I never bring check-in luggage, don't care where I sit and as regards printing out passes, most (including Ryanair) have decent apps that negate the need for that.
N.B. This applies to shortish trips, to places in Europe. If it's a long haul trip or long duration, I'll consider other airlines.
>"Norwegian borrowed the same play book Michael O'Leary (of Ryanair) used ~6 years earlier: putting in a big, bold order for new Boeing aircraft just as the aviation market was tanking (due to 9/11 in O'Leary's case and the GFC in Norwegian's)."
This doesn't sound quite right. Starting an airline is not a trivial undertaking, certainly not something you could hope to complete during a temporary downturn or use "market timing" like you would with equities.
Norwegian along with most other budget carriers leases their planes. This gives them certain advantages. This model allows them to always be taking advantage of most fuel efficient planes and phase out less efficient parts of their fleet much quicker[1]. Also the lessor absorbs much of the maintenance costs on the leased planes where's bigger companies that buy fleet outright have to assume that costs themselves often with union labor.
In fact Norwegian is also now in the business of leasing planes to other budgets carriers[2].
Norwegian didn't start in 2007. They go back to the early 90's.
Re: leasing. This is true of virtually all airlines these days outside of some flag carriers - I was being sloppy with my wording :) However, you get much better lease rates if you're willing to commit to a very large order and are negotiating it during a downturn. Which is what both Ryanair and Norwegian did.
Airline manufacturers and leasing companies traditionally experience a large drop off in their deal pipeline at the beginning of an economic shock/downturn because most airlines are badly run, cash strapped, slow moving and have no appetite from their creditors to commit to multi-billion, multi-year leases just when the wider economy is going to shit (and hurting their passenger loads). Non-legacy airlines (mainly budgets) have more tools available: they quickly drop routes, slash staff count etc. to ride the downturn while at the same time investing for the inevitable swing back. Helps too that they are the last to be hit by falling pax numbers since their ticket prices are so cheap.
There's lots of other factors at play too that I haven't really touched on. How an airline hedges its fuel and forex, what deals they have with airports, which manufacturer they standardise on (Boeing or Airbus), where they get their crews from, how they retail their tickets, which markets they're strong in, what AOC(s) they have, who their investors/creditors are (state, bank, sovereign wealth fund, pe, private) and on and on and on.
>"Norwegian didn't start in 2007. They go back to the early 90's."
Sure, I didn't say that they started in 2007. I'm unsure why you are refuting that particular point. Norwegian did begin with leased planes however:
"Norwegian Air Shuttle (NAS) was founded on 22 January 1993 to take over the regional airline services produced by Busy Bee for Braathens in Western Norway. Busy Bee, founded in 1966, was a subsidiary of Braathens that operated a fleet of Fokker 50 aircraft on charter services. This included the network of regional services between cities on the west coast of Norway operated on wet lease for the mother company. Following Busy Bee's bankruptcy in December 1992, NAS took over three leased Fokker 50 aircraft, and started operating from Bergen Airport, Flesland to Haugesund Airport, Karmøy, as well as from Bergen to Molde Airport, Årø or Kristiansund Airport, Kvernberget, and onwards to Trondheim Airport, Værnes."[1]
While leasing is very common, bigger carriers are a mix of both purchase and leases, leasing is still only 40% of total of plane makers sales[2]. Leasing cuts both ways as plane is much cheaper for a carrier if it is used for its entire 30 year lifespan.
Sorry, misunderstood when you said "Starting an airline is not a trivial undertaking, certainly not something you could hope to complete during a temporary downturn or use "market timing" like you would with equities.". I thought you were implying the founders of Norwegian spotted an opportunity and started-up during the downturn.
Outside of some state backed airlines, I would have thought any airline founded in the last 35 years will have started with 100% leased aircraft. For airlines that own their own equipment, in the first world at least, most of them tend to offload aircraft at the 17 to ~20 year stage (at which point they're usually sold on to leasing companies who then lease them out to charter/acmi operators or they find their way down to Africa or LATAM).
The problem with buying your own equipment (from a budget airline PoV) is that you can't benefit from newer model fuel efficiencies or improved pax capacity. They also put much higher pressure cycle loads on the hulls due to the increased rotation frequency of the short-haul point-to-point model (which reduces the serviceable life of the airframe and hence the re-sale value). Running a mixed leased/purchased fleet starts making more sense when your route network isn't dominated by short-haul.
As an example, Ryanair's average fleet age is < 6 years (across 300 aircraft).
If you have access to some cash, it's not as hard as you might think.
I worked with a guy in CompUSA in college who was literally a retail salesdude, who was on the phone all day trying to get some deal together to lease planes. He ended up hustling a deal with a travel agency his girlfriend worked for (this was the mid 90s) and getting his dad and a few investors to buy into the plane charter.
I thought he was just crazy, but he ended up running charters for at least a half dozen trips to the Carribean, and made a good buck on it.
Granted that he was doing charters, not starting an airline. But it was much easier than I had imagined.
Sure, I don't think its that tough to lease a plane but the time consuming bits are things like the regulatory regime and obtaining takeoff and landing slots at airports.
At least here in Europe I fly Norwegian almost anywhere they go exactly because they are a low-cost flying through main airports.
I'm going to Amsterdam Schiphol this week flying from Stockholm-Arlanda, for an example.
What Norwegian really seems to do well is cramming rotations, I've seen a plane turn over from landing to take-off in about 30~40 minutes.
Also: Norwegian is by far one of the best companies I've flown, free Wi-Fi onboard, no one pesters me about backpack sizes, no dark patterns when selling me tickets to upsell something, most of my flights with them were on schedule or delayed by about 10 minutes or less.
All in all I wouldn't ever compare Ryanair to Norwegian, the only thing in common they have is being low-cost and probably the strategy for ordering tons of planes in a down market.
Companies that have low costs and innovate during a downturn are always the ones to come out the strongest out of the downturn. By the time the big players "return to normal" in an upmarket, those innovators are already in a much better long term position to take them on.
This is definitely true although in Norwegian's case they also benefited from some lucky timing: the GFC happened to occur just as Boeing were developing new aircraft that would finally be capable of offering low enough ops costs for the LCC model to work on longer sector times. I doubt too that Norwegian foresaw how long oil prices would remain low when they made the order.
Norwegian are where they are today thanks to: execution, vision, luck and balls. Just like all the other hyper successful businesses of the world (Amazon, Ryanair, Southwest, Netflix etc. etc.).
You are right but miss some things:
1. Planes are easier to clean
2. Even the Emergency board card can't get stolen (Printed on the chair)
3. Can't buy tickets on other websites
4. Point to point airline, luggage does not have to get transferred, no missed connection flights.
One of the biggest advantages are the short breaks. Sometimes they even don't turn off the turbines before they fly back. I am skeptical if Norwegian can copy all this to long distance.
I too am sceptical the pure LCC model will work for extended long haul routes but I think it can definitely work for medium-haul (i.e. Western Europe to Eastern/Central US). I think the legacy carriers will also have an easier time catching up to Norwegian's prices in the medium-haul space since the distances involved restrict how creative you can be to get costs down (compared to the short-haul market) i.e. there's a limit to how cheap Norwegian can make it.
Air Asia X and Scoot have been doing quite well in the medium-haul market (<8 hours) in Asia. However, Air Asia X just announced that they're abandoning a mooted 2nd attempt at long haul (Asia to Europe/US) because the numbers just aren't there; they'll fly Japan-Hawaii but no further.
Norwegian is at the better end of the low fare airlines. They don't use shady UI patterns (or ads!) on their website. They don't walk around the aisle selling lottery tickets. And they don't land on third tier airports with ridiculous transfer times to cities. Basically they work like a full service airline, but of course they only work from A to B and don't offer the fancy guarantees you need with more complicated bookings.
I regularly fly Norwegian but wouldn't fly Ryan again if my life depended on it.
Yeah I've had great experiences with them every time. Felt just like flying a full service airline except with way lower fares.
I was on their first flight from NYC to Paris and they even had a mini celebration free "buffet" with snacks and gave out business class seats to the first ~ten people to have booked their seat on that flight!
Stewart is about a 20 minute ($35) cab ride plus 90 minute ($22) train ride from Grand Central Terminal. I've only flown to NY a couple times, and even I've experienced longer transit times than that between midtown and JFK.
True enough - but they're flying 737s into SWF. I would bet they'll get plenty of people not going to or coming from NYC to fill the 183 seats on those planes.
But then what do you do if only Ryanair flies remotely close to where you need to be? Every time I go home I could either fly ryanair and be home in about 3 hours, or fly with someone else + take the train, total journey time = 9-10 hours. Free market competition is great if there actually is any competition.
The only way I'd take a LCC into an "alternate airport" would be if I lived closer to the alternate than major.
For someone like you who is commuting home, it makes a ton of sense. For typical business/leisure travel it rarely is convenient, and like many folks I'm astounded at the level of inconvenience people will go through to save $50 on a flight.
I often go to alternate airports. For me, that's Brussels Zaventem as well as Eindhoven. To both, it's about an hour and a half train ride: quiet, smooth, free Wifi. Versus maybe a 30 minute train ride from my apartment to the Schiphol airport in Amsterdam.
The price difference for my extra hour on a train is about $120-$150. I'd say earning $150 an hour for sitting in a quiet smooth train with free Wifi is almost certainly worth it, unless you're the kind of person who hates trains.
I love the alternate airports. What I lose in being less conveniently located I more than make up in arriving at a generally much smaller, less busy, and quieter facility.
Note that some of their upcoming long haul stuff is to obscure airports: their new flights from Edinburgh are to "Providence/Boston T. F. Green Airport" which is an hour+ away from Boston. (Well, it's a totally reasonable airport for Providence, but marketing it as Boston is dubious!)
> Well, it's a totally reasonable airport for Providence, but marketing it as Boston is dubious!)
If your destination is truly downtown Boston.
However, a lot of people are coming from the suburbs or going to somewhere on Route 128. In those instances, Providence (or Nashua) is WAY faster--especially even remotely close to rush hours. Digging your way into Logan is always a nightmare. And Providence is a vastly nicer airport experience.
The Boston airports really do qualify as close to each other if you're renting a car (less than an hour to Boston under most circumstances and probably less than 45 minutes if you're going to Route 128/I-495).
(Long Beach to Ontario in Los Angeles is nominally 45 minutes but WAY longer due to traffic).
You can hop on a train to South Station. Granted you can do that from Newark, but it is a cheap train (only during the week because America). So not as convenient as Logan, but definitely comparable to SFO/Oakland.
They fly direct to Logan and JFK from Gatwick. It probably doesn't make financial sense to connect "real" airports to relatively minor ones like Edinburgh.
I should add I meant for customers. They might well be treating employees like crap. But so does Ryan et.al. I suppose. As far as I'm aware they are at least not actively anti union and similar crazy things that Ryanair is known for.
Hard to be excessively anti union in Norway as being a union member is so normal. Something like 80% of the working population. Still Norwegian Air Shuttle has gotten a lot of flak in Norewgian news media for their confrontations with pilot unions.
As a Norewgian I got mixed feelings about them. It is cool with a Norwegian company doing so well and I like flying with them more than other low cost carriers. Ryan air is just too nasty for me to ever want to fly with. I got a minimum of principles and they border on being crooks.
Still I am not happy about many things Norwegian airshuttle does. I wish they played more fair with the unions and took safety more serious. They are pushing boundaries with safety with overworked pilots. Not sure how they are by international standards. Noregian labour regulations tend to be a lot stricter than most other places.
Presumably that's to cover their liability for the flights not connecting properly?
If you have a connection, you need flight 1 to arrive x minutes before flight 2 departs. If that doesn't happen you start asking things of the airline (at cost to them). If you purchased the tickets separately, it was your fault that you missed the connecting flight.
I just leave those here in case you wonder how Norwegian works. They have brand new planes for efficiency on one hand but on the other, they screw their staff similar as to other budget airlines.
"Norwegian’s modus operandi does raise interesting questions. Should a carrier established in one country be allowed to offer wages typical of another? And should airline employees be given the same labor protections regardless of where they are located?"
One asshole move in recent history back in Norway was that when the pilots were threatening to strike over long shifts or some such, the company spun up a subsidiary, moved all the pilot employments to it, and leased foreign pilots to fly domestic routes.
All under the pretext that this was not circumventing the strike, because the pilots were not working for them but for the newly created subsidiary.
This just shows that strikes aren't really a good tool in a dynamic economy where you can just spin up companies as necessary, and would need (increasingly complex) legislation to keep them relevant.
The right political response should be to strengthen workers bargaining position---run the economy hot enough to turn the labour market into a sellers market, and keep enough social safety net that even just saying No without another job lined up would be feasible.
And ensure that authorities are powerful enough to just make swift decisions about things like this.
"Since this move accomplishes exactly the curcumvention of the strike, we consider the new company bound by the old company's agreements. Oblige by Monday or stop flying in Norway".
Where I live, and I assume in a lot of northern Europe, being on strike is not a valid reason to fire someone - if it's in the correct part of the contract cycle (the contract is 1,2 or 3 years and workers promise not to strike in return for the conditions in the contract). Strikes typically occur when the contract is up and a new one is being written.
Second - a company that would cross the unions by hiring new workers would be blockaded. First by the union itself, but very soon by other unions. For example a restaurant that doesn't pay the correct wages might not be able to get deliveries of certain products, garbage won't be picked up etc. Outside the entrance customers are handed flyers that the restaurant is mistreating staff. All of this is regardless of whether the restaurant staff wants to be union members and regardless of whether they are happy with their contracts.
And this is working very well actually - there is for example no need for minimum wages set by law. Strikes are rare, and "illegal/wild" strikes outside of contract periods are almost unheard of. Perhaps surprisingly, businesses are quite happy with this setup. Weaker unions would likely mean more unnecessary strikes, and definitely more regulation of things that are now covered by agreements.
ATC was a different kettle of fish. As federal employees they were prohibited from striking, and the strike allegedly caused a public safety issue. If you break the law to strike, you get no protection.
(Police and school teachers have similar requirements in their contracts and will use "sick-outs" to apply pressure without a full strike)
"Should a carrier established in one country be allowed to offer wages typical of another?"
The chief concern is safety.
America's airline industry especially with the consolidations of United buying Continental and American buying US Airways is dysfunctional. We have no equivalent of Ryan Air or EasyJet in the US and we should.
US domestic carriers should strive to compete with Norwegian offering their prices and stop complaining.
We do have low-cost carriers like Spirit & Frontier airlines.
I know somebody who was in a long-distance Washington DC - Florida relationship and was able to get $20-$40 round-trip flights for weekend trips pretty regularly.
Well from NYC, both of the airlines fly out of LGA and Spirit also out of Newark, but I've never, never seen fares anything that are better than the other carriers that I get through Kayak or other sites. Never.
NYC SFO July 11 to 20 RT is about $330 to $350 on Spirit, Frontier, and Kayak (with better carriers).
They are not comparable to EasyJet and Ryan Air which does offer substantially lower fares.
When things go well with Norwegian it's a fantastic airline. But I've witnessed some absolutely awful experiences others have had - fights delayed 11 hours, some even more than that, leaving everyone stranded in the airport. Other times they've contracted out flights to a no-name airline that uses ancient planes with no in flight entertainment.
I'm happy to take Norwegian when I'm travelling by myself, as I'm content to take the risk. But if I'm travelling with family I'll usually avoid them.
I agree with this, at my work we fly regularly between London and Oslo, and some of the delays experienced have been incredible. On Friday I flew from Oslo to London, and the earlier flight was delayed for over 6 hours (they were still there at the gate when we took off). Our flight was an over an hour late and they had no food on board.
Colleagues have experienced cancelled flights and delays of over 12 hours a few times.
Despite that, there aren't many better alternatives. Ryanair are similarly unreliable and others are expensive.
For anyone travelling to Europe from the bay area, you can't beat Norwegian. They have nonstop flights from OAK to Stockholm and Oslo on brand new 787's for as cheap as <$300 each way. It's another $50 to anywhere in Europe from those two cities on the budget lines like Ryanair.
I fly OAK-ARN regularly. Biggest tip is being near the door when arriving at OAK. Security time is the quickest in the US if first out the door, and the slowest (2+ hrs) if last out the door. Of course, coming back in ARN, you're through in 5 mins. I can't understand why the US can't fix this with a few dollars - it's destroying your reputation.
The flight leaving tomorrow was $340 one way when I checked now. Round-trip, I was able to find a non-stop OAK--OSL ticket for $510 (similar September dates to yours).
The utility of that depends on what your priorities are. Low-cost and longer flights, plus checking in again when you change airlines? Norwegian Air is good.
If you want to get on a plane, go to sleep, and wake up at your destination, a extra few hundred dollars is worth it to some people.
How are they 'longer'? Fuel efficient cruise speed for an airliner is very much constant. All airlines try to stick to that, unless the flight is late and makes up to meet the landing slot.
I've been curious about Norwegian for years, but I can never actually find flights on them. As I recall, they had like one for a week from Oakland and it was always full. Maybe I'm not remembering correctly, or maybe I was choosing the wrong destination, but I've never been able to find an itinerary worth booking.
It's an amazing airline. Website and mobile apps are perfect. Planes are new and clean. You swipe your card below the entertainment system screen and order from there. Staff, especially when Thai, are outstanding. Prices are low and the "Premium" ticket class has generous room without being excessively expensive.
IIRC, inflight entertainment is free. Scheduled meal costs extra at time of ticket purchase. Much better to bring your own food, or buy their decent snacks as you get hungry.
Oh wow I've never been on a transatlantic flight with pay-for food but I think it makes sense. I don't know why people feel the need to eat so frequently on flights and it clauses chaos for everyone while it's being served if you are in economy.
It's included in premium and paid for in economy. Some times they have steaks! The texture is quite a like sous vide. I have no idea how that's possible at that scale/altitude :-)
Normally I fly Delta when taking the Boston <> London route, but Norwegian's prices have been too good to ignore of late, particularly one-way tickets (since I'm not always sure of my return date).
Will be interesting to see how Delta, American, et al react to Norwegian's Uber-esque pricing.
p.s. discovered Norwegian via Google Flights, which has supplanted pretty much every other airfare search option I used to use.
Meanwhile, the two top stories on nrk.no, the norwegian state supported news and tv network, are both about how Norwegian Air spoils peoples vacation with their cancellations and poor service.
True, but as far as I've seen they always have to route through Iceland, correct? Norwegian fly direct form several big European cities. Also, how do their planes / in flight entertainment etc compare to Norwegian?
I hate flying any cheap airline, at 2m tall I don't fit in typical sardine can seats at all. I always pay more to get a better seat, which I don't mind, but often cheap airlines don't even offer better seat pitch except on exit rows and unless you are lucky you can never count on getting one.
Now that all airlines are getting into the cheap category, I fear eventually I can't fly at all.
I'm over 2m, and flew Norwegian last week. I just about fit into the seat, but it was very uncomfortable. I wouldn't want to fly for more than 2 hours at that kind of comfort level.
It is very frustrating just how much airlines fail to cater for tall passengers. They all have different rules for emergency exit seats, and the cost of upgrading can be quite high.
As someone living in Oslo, I don't find them terribly cheap for flying within Europe. It could be though that I've been spoilt on ticket prices from/to London. They do have decent sales sometimes, unlike EasyJet, Vueling, etc. whose sales barely amount to anything.
I mistook a Swedish neighbour for being Norwegian, afterwards I felt stupid for this as clearly I had not been paying attention. (Her name begins with 'N' so that may be the cause of the 'senior moment'.)
As an English person living in England I have no idea whether getting someone's country 'almost right' is a hurtful thing. Is the Norwegian vs Swedish thing real? If so, is it for the reason I give - not paying attention - or is there more to it than that?
Swedish vs Norwegian is mostly playful banter. Our lives, culture, values and language are all very similar, so being mistaken for the other is no big deal as it doesn't have any particularly negative connotations attached.
Some countries people will be very upset. I think these are the more sensitive ones:
Pakistan/India
Iran/its neighbors
South Korea/North Korea (you'd be surprised how often people think South Koreans might be from North Korea)
Mexico/its neighbors
By "sensitive" I don't mean that people will get very offended, just that they might be mildly annoyed. Norway/Sweden as well as Netherlands/Belgium is mostly a playful rivalry.
At least in the case of India / Pakistan I don't think it's as much about being upset or offended as being worried of being subject to any potential negative connotations associated with the other country.
Norway may well be considered the upstart little brother, or hick relative of the Scandinavian nations.
This partially because it was a long time the subservient partner of Denmark-Norway, and then later passed to Sweden as war-reparations after Denmark backed Napoleon (never mind the earlier event where Trøndelag was given to Sweden after the 30 years war, only to be handed back a decade later because Sweden found them to be unruly).
That said, mostly it is playful banter. For example, all nations have similar jokes where representatives of the nations try to one up each other, and the nation of the story teller always come out on top to a massive degree.
I just flew with them from LAX to LGW. I think the experience was not bad, but the staff seemed sometimes pretty overwhelmed with the logistics of which passenger ordered what option.
"The U.S. Department of Transportation, besieged with opposition from domestic airlines, labor unions, and other interest groups, took three years to approve Norwegian’s transatlantic plan."
This is the same government under Obama and Democrats that allowed for consolidation of United buying Continental and American buying US Air which resulted in less competition.
The Democrats used to represent regular people instead of favoring special interests that result in higher prices.
Instead of allowing the legacy carriers to slow down Norwegian and other innovators, the legacies should copy them. They have much more capital and they can make it happen if they want to.
At what expense of high paying, quality, American jobs?
A huge cost advantage that NAI enjoys on many of their international flights is through a flag-of-convenience scheme. NAI is a Norwegian majority owned company but has established their base of operations for international flying in Ireland. Through this arrangement they are able to hire pilots and cabin crews under contracts and work rules of southeast Asia where wages are low and work rules are less restrictive. You might imagine how cutting costs in that regard might have an impact on quality of service and more importantly SAFETY.
If this precedent is allowed there is no doubt the major American airlines will do the same in the interest of remaining competitive but shockingly airlines in the US have actually resisted this in the interest of the jobs of American people. I can't speak to each airline individually but for example Delta Air Lines directly employs 80,000 people in addition to 10s of thousands of contractors. Multiply that by 3 or 4 and you're looking at a ton of well paying American jobs. Not to mention when is the last time you remember a fatality on a major US airline?
I think the flag-of-convenience scheme leads us down a slippery slope where getting the lowest bidding pilot cadets trumps safety.
> "At what expense of high paying, quality, American jobs?"
When I fly to Israel with a layover in Istanbul to visit friends in Istanbul, I am using Turkish pilots, thus depriving Americans of jobs. They are lower cost than many European pilots. Are you saying I shouldn't be flying Turkish Air? I don't understand? Incidentally, the flights from NYC to Istanbul use very modern planes and are staffed with very friendly staff.
Direct flights to Israel on El Al use Israeli pilots whom I guessing don't get paid as much as their American counterparts and yet, highly trained as probably almost all of them were in the Israeli Air Force.
So, please explain your position.
I am concerned with safety and in fact part my work deals with safety in healthcare. Airlines landing in US airports should be following FAA regulations. It is important that the FAA regulate this.
I encourage US domestic carriers to change the way they operate so that they can match the Norwegian fares while retaining American jobs.
But to complain that Norwegian is offering fares that make Europe more accessible for people with fixed or limited income is just wrong.
How would you "encourage US domestic carriers to change the way they operate so that they can match the Norwegian fares while retaining American jobs." I think the point is that that is impossible.
I don't agree. The consolidation of major carriers under Obama administration (United buying Continental, and American buying US Air) has reduced competition and thus higher fares, worse service.
They don't fly out of regional airports at least in NYC I think that is rare.
I"ll bet there are a lot of operational issues.
Delta, United and others own low-cost carriers (the famous United case where the senior was dragged off the plane screaming and kicking was not on United but a low cost fully owned subsidiary carrier of United) as it is, so they could have a low-cost carrier that travels to Europe. These low-cost wholly owned carriers are domestic only.
But none of them have them because they want to cannibalize the higher fares charged. They enjoy their margins.
Norwegian (like Amazon, like Uber) is in a contest to capture market share and thus may be willing to operate on thin margins or even take a short term loss to capture share. The major American carriers may not want to invest the money to retain share and prefer to use politics instead.
In good years, airlines have some of the lowest profit margins of any industry. Maybe instead of allowing a bunch of crappy carriers to come and go, it would be better to allow consolidation into a few majors. Ticket prices might be somewhat higher, but they would still be more affordable than they were when the industry was fully regulated.
EasyJet, Ryan Air, and Norwegian are not crappy carriers that come and go. Low profit margins have to do with an industry that by-and-large is a commodity. But prices have to do with operating costs and Norwegian and Ryan Air and Easy Jet have done a better job of controlling their operating costs than US carriers.
> the famous United case where the senior was dragged off the plane screaming and kicking was not on United but a low cost fully owned subsidiary carrier of United
United does not own Republic Airways and they are not a subsidiary of United Continental Holdings (United's parent). Republic is its own airline operating flights under contract for United, Delta and American.
The legacies by and large do not own the regional carriers, nor are those airlines intended to be low-cost carriers. The differences primarily lie in the aircraft operated and result from union contracts that inhibit the legacies from profitably operating smaller (non-mainline) aircraft.
United Express doesn't operate flights themselves. They own no aircraft and employ no flight crews. They contract out all operations to carriers like Republic.
United Express is nothing more than a brand serving as an umbrella for a group of subcontractors.
United seems to have some operational control since the CEO of United said that they would no longer be dragging people off of flights and in the media that passenger was listed as being on a "United Express" flight.
These subcontractors seems to run with lower operational expenses and yet use Americans as pilots following FAA guidelines. United could have a similar arrangement with lower operational costs for overseas flights.
> At what expense of high paying, quality, American jobs?
Are they high-paying because of the time and effort it takes to procure necessary skills (anesthesiologists) or are they high-paying through artificial throttling of the supply and monopolistic anti-competitive practices (taxi medallions)?
One is the boon to the economy, another one is rent-seeking and employs a broken window fallacy to justify itself.
> I think the flag-of-convenience scheme leads us down a slippery slope where getting the lowest bidding pilot cadets trumps safety.
So far pilot safety has been associated with the number of hours flown, not the specific rates one was paid for those hours. If somebody proves that, given the same number of hours flown, a higher-paid pilot produces more safety per capita, FAA regulations for acquiring the commercial/ATP licenses can be modified accordingly.
Jobs at major airlines are high paying because of the high cost of time, effort, and dollars necessary to procure the skills necessary for the job. A new pilot can expect to spend at least $150,000-200,000 at a 4 year program largely due to the expense needed to gain those hours you mention that make him or her safer. Once that's done you'll spend at least a couple thousand hours working to get experience in low paying jobs like those explained in the article you linked. All of this experience is necessary to get those high paying jobs ($200,000+ within a few years) at a major carrier to make the pay off worth it.
The major airlines are paying high wages to attract the best, most experienced pilots in the world. There is definitely no rent-seeking in this employment market.
> Jobs at major airlines are high paying because of the high cost of time, effort, and dollars necessary to procure the skills necessary for the job.
An ATP license for a major airline is no different than an ATP license for Bob's Discount Airlines, so the costs of obtaining either one are the same. Airlines (or in the US, their unions, who usually govern this) generally promote on seniority, which does relate to the number of hours flown, but considering it's the hours that are flown on the job, it's airline's investment at that point.
In reality, though, jobs at major airlines pay well for senior pilots because the unions for major airlines are run by senior pilots, who see no problem in negotiating a payscale with significant income inequality between junior and senior levels. I'd urge you to read Philip Greenspun's "Unions and Airlines" to understand the way the industry is structured in the US http://philip.greenspun.com/flying/unions-and-airlines
> The major airlines are paying high wages to attract the best, most experienced pilots in the world.
If they were, senior pilots from United would be jumping ship for better compensation packages with Delta, and then American would have to raise the stakes to attract the best and the brightest. But a senior pilot at United will have to restart as a junior pilot with Delta, all that "high cost of time, effort, and dollars necessary to procure the skills" be damned.
> "But a senior pilot at United will have to restart as a junior pilot with Delta, all that "high cost of time, effort, and dollars necessary to procure the skills" be damned."
That doesn't make any sense at all. That sounds like some sort of anti-trust issue that keeps airline costs low by making it impossible to "poach" highly qualified pilots from other carriers and raise wages.
Seniority rules are written by unions, not airlines. From airline management point of view, they have a fixed liability (number of pilot man-hours) and a fixed resource (pool of money to pay for those man-hours). How that fixed resource is applied to the fixed liability is up to the union.
"A 45-year-old captain who has been with an airline for 15 years cannot quit and go elsewhere, because doing so would mean starting all over at the bottom, earning $25,000 a year at a new airline and working every holiday. Imagine if a surgeon had to go back to being an intern every time he changed hospitals."
It's exploitable somewhat by airline management (definitely takes the metaphor of golden handcuffs to the next level), but then the number of airlines is not fixed, with new start-ups coming on board every few years or so, so you'd think that at least someone would exploit these inefficiencies, if it made economic sense for them.
For what it's worth, just because one party has a president in office, doesn't mean the other parties, businesses, and special interests stop trying to push their agendas.
What I know is that the Democratic Obama Justice Dept wrongly bowed to the special interests to weaken competition among domestic carriers (perhaps bowing to union interests which also want less competition so that they can get higher wages). It clearly was an anti-trust issue and yet they approved not one but two consolidations.
Consumers paid for these consolidations with higher fares and worse service.
Underneath it all is the same operating model that allowed low cost carriers to flourish in the short-haul market: streamlined, standardized, modern, fuel efficient fleet; non-unionised crews; using cheaper secondary airports; flying direct; cramming in as many rotations in 24 hours as possible and flying outside of peak hours to get cheaper landing slots.
The new Boeing and Airbus models make the LCC approach increasingly viable for longer haul routes thanks to big fuel efficiency improvements and smarter cabin interiors/materials that boost pax load without sacrificing comfort. Oil prices are also helping since the price has remained low for so long now that even if an airline hedged the wrong way a few years ago they're now all enjoying better rates.
IAG (British Airways, Iberia) and Lufthansa are trying to get in on the action too with Level and Eurowings respectively.