That Norwegian sure makes a good Pad Thai... Wait...

derg

derg

Apparently a "terse" writer
Staff member
Remember what I preached about a decade ago about what the US market would get if we relaxed cabotage rules? Here's a little taste, chilluns!


Norwegian’s New London-U.S. Flights Show Threat if U.S. Fails to Level Playing Field for its Airlines
Posted on October 17, 2013by The Pilot Partisan Agenda
What is it going to take to wake U.S. policymakers up to the fact that our nation’s aviation industry is competing on a very un-level playing field with state-owned and some other airlines?

Today’s announcement by Norwegian Air Shuttle (NAS) underscores the need to recognize the unfair advantages used by some foreign airlines to take markets from U.S. airlines. It’s time for the U.S. government to step in and level the playing field.

The airline said today that it will begin serving three U.S. destinations from London’s Gatwick airport next summer. It will be offering extremely low fares, undercutting U.S. carriers in the market by as much as 50%.

NAS is able to offer these market-distorting fares because of several loopholes in applicable labor law. While NAS is headquartered in Norway, they intend to register their long-haul fleet in Ireland and hire Thai-based flightcrews who will work under Singaporean contracts. Additionally, the planes they’ll be flying have been bought with loan guarantees from the U.S. Export-Import Bank.

While passengers riding NAS might enjoy cheaper fares in the short-term, the unfair competition will drive down revenue at American carriers. This potential race to the bottom could ultimately harm our airline industry and put quality U.S. jobs at risk.

U.S. airlines contribute more than $1 trillion to the U.S. economy and nearly 10 million jobs. Their health and success is a major driver for economic growth.

Policymakers should not be allowing business models like that concocted by NAS to exploit our markets and put U.S. jobs at risk. We need government policy that prevents a race to the bottom in the international air travel market and creates a level playing for U.S. carriers.
 
Yep. At JFK, Emirates has been selling tickets to Milan, Italy, Cathay Pacific to Vancouver, and Kuwait Airways to London Heathrow for a while now. Slowly but surely...

To add, Norwegian Air Shuttle is a low fare no-frills carrier which has gone long-haul recently with 787s. While ticket prices of the likes of Emirates are at least on par with US air fares, I wouldn't be surprised to see success with this long-haul LCC.
 
Ultimately, this sort of thing will happen. I'm all for fighting it off as long as possible, but in a shrinking world, markets will open, by hook or by crook. I don't very much like it, but there it is. It does amuse me a bit that the Scandos, who have benefited wildly from trade protectionism, are the first to jump in and screw other nations. Nordic Model indeed. Chuckle. I don't think they've any idea what they're letting themselves in for.
 
cencal83406 said:
But...but...but!!!! Free market!

@Cessna414JJB @Houston @rocketman5150

Please, who am I missing. This is great for the consumer. The government should stay out of business affairs.
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I'm a BIG fan of the free market, but I'm on the fence when it comes to international market. We, as a country, have interests that are important tools in balancing the US economy. I think regulation here is unavoidable and important when you have so many other countries with different angles to choose from. After all, we are a stand-alone country for a reason and if we don't have interests to protect, we lose our individuality and we lose our citizens.
 
cencal83406 said:
But...but...but!!!! Free market!

@Cessna414JJB @Houston @rocketman5150

Please, who am I missing. This is great for the consumer. The government should stay out of business affairs.
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This isn't free market at all. The other side is freaking subsidized heavily. You can't compete when the other companies' countries pay for half the overhead.
I guess if the Saudi's want to start giving free money to Delta and United...
 
ChasenSFO said:
Yep. At JFK, Emirates has been selling tickets to Milan, Italy, Cathay Pacific to Vancouver, and Kuwait Airways to London Heathrow for a while now. Slowly but surely...

To add, Norwegian Air Shuttle is a low fare no-frills carrier which has gone long-haul recently with 787s. While ticket prices of the likes of Emirates are at least on par with US air fares, I wouldn't be surprised to see success with this long-haul LCC.
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US carriers already do this kind of thing. Delta is a fine example with flights out of NRT and AMS to places other than the US.

Heck, the vast majority of my international flying experience is non-US to non-US. I mean really, I work for a US carrier, operating under contract with a German company, hauling freight between Japan, Australia, Taiwan, and S. Korea (among many other places). This is already happening.
 
NRT was by treaty. And there's one out of AMS. Not like we just showed up and starting building a hub on a sovereign nation.

The history of the BOM flight is that we had a FRA hub as part of the Pan Am acquisition that they formed with concurrence of the Germans during the decades of rebuilding.

That moved to CDG since they partnered with AF and to AMS when AF/KLM thought it would be best there.
 
Derg said:
NRT was by treaty. And there's one out of AMS. Not like we just showed up and starting building a hub on a sovereign nation.
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My point is, US carriers have been doing this for a long time already between other countries. I never would want to see US jobs be affected because of this, but US carriers are not victims here. We do it all the time.
 
That's a real quick "approximate" description as I just got to my car and, well, back to the real world! Yes!
 
dasleben said:
My point is, US carriers have been doing this for a long time already between other countries. I never would want to see US jobs be affected because of this, but US carriers are not victims here. We do it all the time.
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This is true, but this is different in a few ways:

Most of these routes are in Asia. Asian pax are more or less nationalistic in their travels. On NRT-BKK, for example, most Japanese will take ANA or JAL, most Thai will take Thai International, and United will get the left overs or on-ward connections from the US or their Star Alliance partners. American's do not have said nationalism, and if Kayak says Norwegian is cheaper then the US carriers, they're all going to Norwegian.

In Asia anyway, US airlines are known for being total crap. They are avoided by most frequent flyers inter-Asia and mostly get low-yeilding pax in coach. Premium pax will almost always go with the Asian carrier unless they're coming from the United States or facing a long connection not going with United or Delta. Here in the US, if you're a premium flyer in New York who needs to weekend in Milan, and your options are Biz Elite on Delta or First Class on Emirates, that's an empty seat on Delta.

Finally, when all US airlines doing tag-on routes internationally are in alliances. These flights are in line with connections from alliance partners who sell tickets on the flights. Delta takes on huge ammounts of KLM frequent flyers and connecting pax in AMS as well as China Eastern connections in Asia, while United takes on many ANA, Asiana, Air China, ect. on its inter-Asia routes. All while taking away pax from their Alliance partner's competing airlines. The problem with the 3 airlines mentioned in this thread(Kuwait, Norwegian, and Emirates), is they don't want alliance partners. Most state-run carriers, obviously, don't need them at all. And long-haul LCCs like Norwegian and Thomas Cook have such dirt cheap fares that attract people going from point A to point B minus connections, they don't make sense for them. This makes it a whole different ball game.

This won't end well for the big few in the US.
 
ChasenSFO said:
This is true, but this is different in a few ways:

Most of these routes are in Asia. Asian pax are more or less nationalistic in their travels. On NRT-BKK, for example, most Japanese will take ANA or JAL, most Thai will take Thai International, and United will get the left overs or on-ward connections from the US or their Star Alliance partners. American's do not have said nationalism, and if Kayak says Norwegian is cheaper then the US carriers, they're all going to Norwegian.
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Objection! Conjecture. Plenty of Japanese/Thais/other on US carriers going overseas. :)

ChasenSFO said:
In Asia anyway, US airlines are known for being total crap. They are avoided by most frequent flyers inter-Asia and mostly get low-yeilding pax in coach. Premium pax will almost always go with the Asian carrier unless they're coming from the United States or facing a long connection not going with United or Delta. Here in the US, if you're a premium flyer in New York who needs to weekend in Milan, and your options are Biz Elite on Delta or First Class on Emirates, that's an empty seat on Delta.
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I commercial lots intra-Asia, and that's just not true. Intra-Asia business/coach on ANA, JAL, Asiana, Korean, and China Airlines (all airlines I've personally commercialed on recently) are on-par, or somewhat worse than, the typical US domestic business/coach setup. To the dismay of many who really think US carriers are all worse than state-owned airlines, the same is true for British Airways, Lufthansa, Aer Lingus, and other intra-Europe carriers. In the case of BA and Lufthansa, US carriers are superior when not traveling long-haul, and mostly on-par during long-haul flights. I recently flew in business from Heathrow to Miami on American, and it was fantastic.

The carriers that really blow US carriers out of the water in the long-haul segment are, from my experience, most (but not all) Middle East carriers and Singapore Airlines. Kuwait Airways is junk, FYI.

ChasenSFO said:
Finally, when all US airlines doing tag-on routes internationally are in alliances. These flights are in line with connections from alliance partners who sell tickets on the flights. Delta takes on huge ammounts of KLM frequent flyers and connecting pax in AMS as well as China Eastern connections in Asia, while United takes on many ANA, Asiana, Air China, ect. on its inter-Asia routes. All while taking away pax from their Alliance partner's competing airlines. The problem with the 3 airlines mentioned in this thread(Kuwait, Norwegian, and Emirates), is they don't want alliance partners. Most state-run carriers, obviously, don't need them at all. And long-haul LCCs like Norwegian and Thomas Cook have such dirt cheap fares that attract people going from point A to point B minus connections, they don't make sense for them. This makes it a whole different ball game.

This won't end well for the big few in the US.
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Sorry to say, that may be true if the "big few" don't reciprocate and start expanding in kind. But like I said, US carriers are not victims. We do it all the time. All the time. Heck, we fly Qantas freight under Qantas callsigns in and out of Sydney, and I know the Aussies aren't happy about that one (@Polar742 is taking Aussie jerbs).
 
Well, you had it coming ! Arrogant domination, constant bullying, outrageous protectionism in one hand while aggressively pushing for outside market liberation, and so on. Add to that soviet-era customer service, beat-to-hell fleets, disillusioned workforce, TSA... it's payback time.
US carriers are avoided like the plague outside the US ! It will take considerable efforts to regain european, asian, african etc. customers !
If you add the easy shortcut that associates US carriers to US foreign policy it was bound to happen one day or another.
 
dasleben said:
Objection! Conjecture. Plenty of Japanese/Thais/other on US carriers going overseas. :)



I commercial lots intra-Asia, and that's just not true. Intra-Asia business/coach on ANA, JAL, Asiana, Korean, and China Airlines (all airlines I've personally commercialed on recently) are on-par, or somewhat worse than, the typical US domestic business/coach setup. To the dismay of many who really think US carriers are all worse than state-owned airlines, the same is true for British Airways, Lufthansa, Aer Lingus, and other intra-Europe carriers. In the case of BA and Lufthansa, US carriers are superior when not traveling long-haul, and mostly on-par during long-haul flights. I recently flew in business from Heathrow to Miami on American, and it was fantastic.

The carriers that really blow US carriers out of the water in the long-haul segment are, from my experience, most (but not all) Middle East carriers and Singapore Airlines. Kuwait Airways is junk, FYI.



Sorry to say, that may be true if the "big few" don't reciprocate and start expanding in kind. But like I said, US carriers are not victims. We do it all the time. All the time. Heck, we fly Qantas freight under Qantas callsigns in and out of Sydney, and I know the Aussies aren't happy about that one (@Polar742 is taking Aussie jerbs).
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Lots of Japanese go over-sees, but its mostly, not entirely, the low yield crowd in coach. I doubt the Asian frequent flyers I know who ride biz class over the pond would agree that Cathay, ANA, JAL, Korean, ect have a better biz class then United and Delta. I was talking about the coach pax though who fill the majority of the seats on the plane numbers wise. I don't know much about Europe honestly, all I can say about that is I found LH's coach better than United's biz service wise in my experience. But I follow the industry in Asia closely, and there is a reason United downgraded 747s and 777s to 737s on almost all its inter-Asia flights as soon as the merger happened. :)
 
Boris Badenov said:
Ultimately, this sort of thing will happen. I'm all for fighting it off as long as possible, but in a shrinking world, markets will open, by hook or by crook. I don't very much like it, but there it is. It does amuse me a bit that the Scandos, who have benefited wildly from trade protectionism, are the first to jump in and screw other nations. Nordic Model indeed. Chuckle. I don't think they've any idea what they're letting themselves in for.
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This is really not something new, the Norwegians have been doing this with freight ships and cruise ships for ages. There are tons of Norwegian companies doing business globally out of Singapore to take advantage of the free market.

ChasenSFO said:
Lots of Japanese go over-sees, but its mostly, not entirely, the low yield crowd in coach. I doubt the Asian frequent flyers I know who ride biz class over the pond would agree that Cathay, ANA, JAL, Korean, ect have a better biz class then United and Delta. I was talking about the coach pax though who fill the majority of the seats on the plane numbers wise. I don't know much about Europe honestly, all I can say about that is I found LH's coach better than United's biz service wise in my experience. But I follow the industry in Asia closely, and there is a reason United downgraded 747s and 777s to 737s on almost all its inter-Asia flights as soon as the merger happened. :)
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Do US carriers adapt their service to specific routes? For example KLM does that, their coach service depends a lot on the destination. Same thing for example on the Brazilian TAM, on the flights to the US coach is about as bad as with any US carrier, to Europe the service is excellent.

The only US airlines I have flown in Biz class are AA and Delta, and I have to say Delta has a service comparable to any European carrier on Atlantic routes, if they just had some more attractive FAs ahahhah
 
Derg said:
Remember what I preached about a decade ago about what the US market would get if we relaxed cabotage rules? Here's a little taste, chilluns!

Norwegian’s New London-U.S. Flights Show Threat if U.S. Fails to Level Playing Field for its Airlines
Posted on October 17, 2013by The Pilot Partisan Agenda
What is it going to take to wake U.S. policymakers up to the fact that our nation’s aviation industry is competing on a very un-level playing field with state-owned and some other airlines?

Today’s announcement by Norwegian Air Shuttle (NAS) underscores the need to recognize the unfair advantages used by some foreign airlines to take markets from U.S. airlines. It’s time for the U.S. government to step in and level the playing field.

The airline said today that it will begin serving three U.S. destinations from London’s Gatwick airport next summer. It will be offering extremely low fares, undercutting U.S. carriers in the market by as much as 50%.

NAS is able to offer these market-distorting fares because of several loopholes in applicable labor law. While NAS is headquartered in Norway, they intend to register their long-haul fleet in Ireland and hire Thai-based flightcrews who will work under Singaporean contracts. Additionally, the planes they’ll be flying have been bought with loan guarantees from the U.S. Export-Import Bank.

While passengers riding NAS might enjoy cheaper fares in the short-term, the unfair competition will drive down revenue at American carriers. This potential race to the bottom could ultimately harm our airline industry and put quality U.S. jobs at risk.

U.S. airlines contribute more than $1 trillion to the U.S. economy and nearly 10 million jobs. Their health and success is a major driver for economic growth.

Policymakers should not be allowing business models like that concocted by NAS to exploit our markets and put U.S. jobs at risk. We need government policy that prevents a race to the bottom in the international air travel market and creates a level playing for U.S. carriers.
Click to expand...

It sounds like Ryanair gone global!
 
Pépé le Pilot said:
Well, you had it coming ! Arrogant domination, constant bullying, outrageous protectionism in one hand while aggressively pushing for outside market liberation, and so on. Add to that soviet-era customer service, beat-to-hell fleets, disillusioned workforce, TSA... it's payback time.
US carriers are avoided like the plague outside the US ! It will take considerable efforts to regain european, asian, african etc. customers !
If you add the easy shortcut that associates US carriers to US foreign policy it was bound to happen one day or another.
Click to expand...

Excellently said. I travel by car domestically and will travel by ship or gladly swim internationally to avoid U.S. carriers.
 
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