El Bunto
You are of course correct, but the point is largely academic ! Its says norwegian on the outside, on the website, to the layman it is the same thing, damage to long haul is damage to short haul ditto the other way round.
I think Bjorn is getting very frustrated with all involved, The Irish seem to have said 'yes' you meet all the requirement for a European AOC which should therefore guarantee 'open skies" to fly between Europe and the USA
Our American cousins want to sell the aircraft, the fact that they have not said NO means they haven't found a reason to reject it, but can't bring themselves to say yes because of the backlash from powerful senators, so they sit on their hands until something gives.
With hindsight Norwegian ought to have set this up before the dream liners turned up, if they had had a European AOC for the 800 fleet flying inter Europe then it might have cut more ice.
Question? how would the US DoT handle an application from Ryanair? even bigger Boeing customer, long standing Irish AOC and the Irish authorities don't seem to have raised any employment practices or safety issue over their operation, far from it, they have gone out of their way to extol the virtues of Ryanair's impeccable safety record and their oversight of it.
Norway should ban all american airlines from flying to Norway, ditto all far East airlines on the ground that they do not have to pay Norwegian unbelievable high social taxes and are therefore social dumping ...........the truth is that the American airlines (and employee's) know they would have to seriously up their game, trust me fly AA economy then Norwegian economy you'd never get on an AA aircraft again