Norwegian Air Shuttle furthers its struggle to make legitimate use of EU-US open skies rights

Norwegian Air has attempted again to gain DoT approval. Norwegian Air Shuttle's long haul operations, which were launched in 2013 and struggled through 2014, are now flourishing. Routes to the US from London Gatwick, outside the airline's home market, have been added to its Scandinavian-based long haul operation.

However, the long haul network is lopsided, with Bangkok the only destination that is not across the Atlantic. The background is complicated, but this is in large measure due to the imbalance in traffic rights available to it as a Norwegian operator in an EU country. It has waited for more than two years to receive a US foreign carrier permit for its Irish subsidiary, Norwegian Air International, but has been met with intransigence from the US Department of Transportation.

Ever innovative, Norwegian is now having another go, making an application for a US permit with another new subsidiary, Norwegian Air UK, in Dec-2015. Predictably, labour organisations and Norwegian's main Scandinavian competitor SAS have already raised objections to this latest (inevitably legitimate) attempt to operate within the EU-US open skies agreement. The Department of Transportation must not allow itself again to be hijacked by anti-competitive factions.