New Deny NAI Video

If the 'market forces' represent the will of the people than when the 'market forces' caused a global economic collapse in 2008 and the government had to bail out a wide variety of private industries how was that a better result than stricter government regulation (such as an outright ban on NAI and the Flag of Convenience scheme) to begin with?

Can you explain that for me?

I don't accept your premise that government had to bail out private industries.
 
Clearly you have no sound facts or points to refute my comments so you are resorting to character assassination and putting ideas/words into my mouth. Come on, you're better than that. Educate me, how are protectionist actions on the part of ALPA going to help the U.S. pilots over the long run? What is the end game for ALPA here? Is it to deny service to any carrier that has lower wages than some arbitrary threshold? Is it to deny service to any carrier that does not meet with ALPA's views on how labor should be treated?

You have said it yourself that foreign airlines are not the place to go now for a vast majority of the pilots out there! It is a clear delineation for ALPA to choose who to support and not.

China Airlines of Taiwan pays roughly the same wages as Norwegian. They bond cadets for 20 years and force them to pay huge amounts of money should they leave before that time. Close to $100,000 in some cases of pilots leaving for Etihad. Should they be banned from service to the USA? Clearly they are not competing on your "level playing field" and do not treat labor (pilots) the same as U.S. carriers.

Is China Airlines starting service with a subleasing company based in Ireland between LGW and FLL?

The whole fear mongering concept of comparing Norwegian to the maritime industry is laughable when you do just a little bit of critical thinking. Are Norwegian or other airlines going to go out and employ uneducated inexperienced pilots? Where are they going to find them? Is there some unknown supply of 3rd world pilots who have an EASA license and will go to work for them at some ridiculously low pay rate? Is an airline going to pop up in Liberia and be granted access to U.S. markets overnight? Will they then pass FAA oversight and be granted Category 1 status?



Typhoonpilot

You would be naive to think that a pathway for 3rd world pilots hasn't already been thought of. Look at the MPL debate and how easily that can be tweaked to meet the demands.
 
If Norwegian wants to stimulate demand then why don't they play by the same rules everyone else does? Other airlines are doing it. Why doesn't NAI?

They are. There's nothing illegal about what they'are doing. Other airlines can avail themselves of the same strategy if they wish to.
 
They are. There's nothing illegal about what they'are doing. Other airlines can avail themselves of the same strategy if they wish to.

Technically it is illegal Norway is not part if the EU and therefore not part of the Open Skies Agreement. @Seggy probably knows more about it,but that's my understanding.
 
Do you realize that a lot of these foreign airlines are government subsidized? There is NO 'will of the market'. It is a will of the country to make sure their foreign airlines succeed.

What's the difference between a foreign country and a private company? Regulations and Treaties.
 
Sorry, but I just don't have the energy anymore. @Seggy speaks for me.


In the beginning of this particular ALPA drive I recall you sort of agreeing with me that they were wasting their energy for what is not really a major problem in the big scheme of things. What has changed?

Code share agreements do far more to reduce U.S. airline jobs than foreign competitors flying to the USA. To me it's pathetic the small amount of service the U.S. carriers have in India, a nation of over 1 billion people. Same with China. Those flight and those jobs are the ones that ALPA should be going after.

That would be energy well spent.


TP
 
In the beginning of this particular ALPA drive I recall you sort of agreeing with me that they were wasting their energy for what is not really a major problem in the big scheme of things. What has changed?

I think I was agreeing with you more on the other Moak pet issues like the Gulf carriers and the Ex-Im Bank. NAI is a serious issue. The only criticism I can remember giving on this is that not enough energy was spent on the FFD and ACMI worlds while they were (are) burning to the ground, yet there seemed to be unlimited resources available for the NAI campaign. I still maintain that criticism. But that's inside baseball stuff, not really a disagreement with ALPA's position on NAI.

Code share agreements do far more to reduce U.S. airline jobs than foreign competitors flying to the USA. To me it's pathetic the small amount of service the U.S. carriers have in India, a nation of over 1 billion people. Same with China. Those flight and those jobs are the ones that ALPA should be going after.

Proper code share leads to increased jobs, not fewer, There is good code share and bad code share. Giving away half of your block hours to RJ carriers is bad code share. Creating a worldwide network through alliances and joint ventures is good code share. SWAPA shares your view of no code share at all, and that's a large part of the reason that SWA is stagnant and could only grow inorganically.
 
Meanwhile, while ALPA has all pilots distracted on the Norwegian issue:

We're in the midst of one of the most expensive times to travel: holiday season. And yet, we're also, more broadly, experiencing a great reckoning within the air travel industry that has seen budget, no-frills airlines, like Spirit Air, rise to prominence -- while traditional air carriers, which have long prioritized comfort, have suffered.

This piece, originally published in October, explains why making transatlantic travel cheap is a harder task than it might sound, and highlights one airline that's trying to beat the odds by offering extremely affordable flights to Europe.

Wow Air, the roughly three-year old discount air carrier, is going where few other ultra low cost airlines have gone: across the Atlantic. And if all goes according to plan, it's going to do it much cheaper than anyone else.

The budget airline, which is based in Iceland, announced last week that it will begin flying passengers non-stop from both Boston and Baltimore to Reykjavik, Iceland for as little as $99 each way. The airline will also offer one-stop flights from the two U.S. cities to London and Copenhagen, starting at $228 for a round trip. The airline will begin offering the flights next March.

"Paying even $200 for a one-way flight to, say, London, is unheard of," said Tom Parsons, the CEO of bestfares.com, which tracks airline pricing. "It just doesn't exist."

The incredibly low ticket prices are real, but don't expect them to last forever. "Those are definitely opening, introductory fares," said Skuli Mogensen, Wow Air's chief executive. "On an occasional basis we hope to be able to introduce similar fares, but those very aggressive. We wouldn't be talking if I had introduced prices more commonly seen in the market, would we?"

But the airline's commitment is to offer the cheapest ticket for every route the airline flies, including transatlantic routes, Mogensen said. The prices Wow Air offers will vary by season, and depend on a number of other factors, including fuel prices and flight vacancies.

famous for squeezing passengers' knees, Wow Air won't skimp quite as much on leg room. The seat pitch, the distance between two seats, is between 30 and 36 inches on the Airbus A320 aircrafts flown by the airline, said Svanhvít Fridriksdóttir, Wow Air's director of communications. Most pitch sizes are about 31 inches, and many discount carrier pitch sizes are less than 30 inches. Spirit Airlines', for instance, is 28 inches.

Wow Air also expects to save money by operating as efficiently as possible. The company relies heavily on online sales and marketing, for instance, which allows it to skip the cost of middlemen. It also operates few airplanes—only four currently—but maximizes their utility. "We have extremely good aircraft utilization," said Mogensen. "Within one 24-hour cycle, a single airplane will fly from Iceland to Boston, back to Iceland, and continue to London, and then back to Iceland, each time full of passengers."
as cheap as advertised, and the routes have been stricken with delays, according to Mann. "Norwegian has had huge difficulties," he said. "All across the summer it has been running relays for its transatlantic flights to and from New York."

The biggest obstacle to discount long distance air travel might simply be that long trips could strip an airline like Wow Air of the efficiency on which it so heavily relies. Despite Wow Air's advantage of being able to stop in Iceland, the nearly 5.5-hour flight between Boston and Reykjavik is still long by budget airline standards.

A comparatively small fleet becomes a competitive disadvantage as soon as there's a delay. "Once it starts to get off-schedule, they'll never get it back on schedule unless they start cancelling flights," said Mann. Likely for that very reason, low cost carriers have soared domestically, but shied away from routes between North America and Europe. Discount airlines currently control nearly a third of the airline market in North America, and more than third of it in Europe, but only about 1 percent of the market for transatlantic travel.
 
Wow-2_zps3d564583.png



Ryanair, which operates more than 100 aircrafts in Europe has been contemplating transatlantic flights for years, but has yet to jump the gun. "If anybody was going to do it, and anybody had the greatest potential to succeed, it would be them." Mann said. "And yet they've decided it's not in the cards. That's a cautionary tale, I'd said."

Wow Air, for its part, is optimistic about its ability to offer the cheapest form of transatlantic travel. "The long haul low cost model hasn't really been implemented because it's hard to achieve the utilization needed," said Mogensen. That is, unless you have a hub in the middle. And Iceland is perfectly suited," said Mogensen.

And despite the added fees from Wow, consumers may still think they're getting a bargain. "If you think you can make it Europe with an 11 pound bag, Wow Air offers a fantastic deal," said Parsons. "Even with their extras, you would still end up flying for a lot cheaper than with other carriers."
The airline plans to expand at least four more destination in North America by 2016, and fly two extra jets next year and a total of 10 airplanes by 2016.
 
You don't seem to understand what the issue is here. It's not about low fare air travel. It's about the flag of convenience model. Wow Air is an Icelandic company, with flights from Iceland, with crews from Iceland, operating under Icelandic safety and labor regulations. If they can offer better fares, then good for them! That's normal competition. NAI is not.
 
You don't seem to understand what the issue is here. It's not about low fare air travel. It's about the flag of convenience model. Wow Air is an Icelandic company, with flights from Iceland, with crews from Iceland, operating under Icelandic safety and labor regulations. If they can offer better fares, then good for them! That's normal competition. NAI is not.


No, what you do not seem to understand is that what NAI is proposing is basically being done elsewhere in the world and airlines need to learn how to compete against it, not bury their head in the sand or try protectionist avenues. Just look to Asia and all the LCC and International LCC set-ups. NAI may or may not be successful, but then you'll have WOW and very likely Ryanair plus others flying the Atlantic using an LCC model.

The intelligent move by the airline managers would be finding a way to effectively compete against them. Protectionism isn't going to work over the long run.

I'm not anti-U.S. Airline. I'm anti-stupidity. I really wish the U.S. airlines are successful. I've been out in the world and see all the potential out there. There are billions of potential passengers for U.S. carriers to serve. Just as there are billions of potential packages for UPS and FedEx to serve.

UPS and FedEx have very successful foreign operations with bases in foreign countries. DAL and UAL have/had very successful foreign operations out of Tokyo Narita.

While ALPA has you all focused on the North Atlantic and a tiny little Scandinavian airline, the bigger threat of competition from Middle Eastern and Asian carriers and the changing dynamics of the world air travel market are going unnoticed.

For the U.S. airlines to continue their recent success they need to recognize where the global travel trends are and make moves to capture that market instead of this insular protectionist crap that they are feeding to their workers. Workers who then get fully distracted with it while the global market share of their employers continues to decrease.


Typhoonpilot
 
You're still not paying attention. This isn't about LCC business models. This is about flag of convenience. It needs to be snuffed out completely.


While I don't disagree that taken to the extreme this model could be dangerous to American Airline workers, I still submit that it isn't the big deal it is being made out to be in regards to Norwegian. They are a European company employing mainly European pilots with a European certificate ( whether it be Norway or Ireland ). They are not an American company, employing pilots from Chad (no offense meant to pilots from Chad), operating under a Liberian certificate. It would be a huge stretch to get to that point.

This is the hot button topic for ALPA all while the 1.2 Billion people in India and the 1.3 Billion people in China have very little service from U.S. air carriers.

It just amazes me that supposedly intelligent airline pilots can miss the elephant in the room. I would be much more in favor of a campaign writing letters to Congress about getting increased route rights into China and India versus trying to stop an airline that serves an area of 30 million people ( Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and London metropolitan area combined ).


Typhoonpilot
 
While I don't disagree that taken to the extreme this model could be dangerous to American Airline workers, I still submit that it isn't the big deal it is being made out to be in regards to Norwegian. They are a European company employing mainly European pilots with a European certificate ( whether it be Norway or Ireland ). They are not an American company, employing pilots from Chad (no offense meant to pilots from Chad), operating under a Liberian certificate. It would be a huge stretch to get to that point.

This is the hot button topic for ALPA all while the 1.2 Billion people in India and the 1.3 Billion people in China have very little service from U.S. air carriers.

It just amazes me that supposedly intelligent airline pilots can miss the elephant in the room. I would be much more in favor of a campaign writing letters to Congress about getting increased route rights into China and India versus trying to stop an airline that serves an area of 30 million people ( Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and London metropolitan area combined ).


Typhoonpilot

NAI is the start. Once you allow the camel's nose under the tent, you're going to have a camel laying in your bed pretty quick. Kick the camel in the nose. Hard.
 
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