https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...s-with-strings

Maybe not only ONE newspaper

Why not read the government's requirements for support to NAS? Then you don't have to rely on the media.

No, but certainly quoting the same analyst.

What's going on in Fornebu HQ? :sad:

It would appear that essentially every airline on the planet will receive some sort of state aid as unpalatable for tax payers as that may be. The old privatized profits socialized losses argument..
Not sure if it has been covered but why would the Norwegian government agree, if indeed they have, to bail out Norwegian Air International that is based in Ireland with likely few if any Norwegian staff? I'm only guessing, but structurally there is probably not much daylight between Norwegian Air Shuttle and Norwegian Air International. The same goes for SAS. Are they really sending Swedish/ Danish tax money to SAS SAIL? An airline set up solely to get out from under tough Scandinavian labor laws. If true we have truly entered a surreal universe and if I were a tax payer in those countries I would surely raise holy hell..

I agree.

If a company is registered for tax purposes in the Cayman Islands, let it appeal to that government for funds.

(not that I am suggesting Norwegian is)

Norwegian is NOT an Irish company so about time someone put a stop to the persistent rumour that Norwegian has its head office in Dublin and flies in Europe with Thai crews employed on the cheap! The Norwegian group is headquartered in Norway and operates on Norwegian, Swedish, Irish and British AOC's with offices in each of these countries, and employs crews locally, that's it! No different from easyJet, Ryanair, the Lufthansa group etc...

Things that went wrong in the past were down to the previous regime which was unceremoniously booted out by some of the larger financial institutions investing in Norwegian, and yes, the previous regime did have delusions of grandeur of turning the aviation industry into a copy of the shipping industry concerning crewing, but this has been firmly laid to rest. The new regime is intent on making these things right and will do so given half a chance.

November Sierra.

you raise some interesting points regarding airlines Europe wide.

As you say Norwegian are HQd in Norway but have AOCs in various countries.

Should the UK government give state aid to a Norwegian company just because they have an AOC in the Uk? To see the money flow out of the UK.

The same can be said for the majority of airline groups within Europe, can of worms all around.

Denying Norwegian Air Shuttle opened an Irish AOC to get rid of the norwegian labour law is deny what is obvious. Even the Scandinavian passengers know that.

Why are so many aircraft registered on EI and not having all of them on LN?

Then you cannot pretend norwegian tax payers to save your company. What would be logic is to save NAS and NSE. Nothing else

What interest should Norway have in routes like Malaga-Munich, Gran Canaria-Madrid or Alicante-Hamburg?

There is a paywalled article on e24.no today that according to its headline speculates in that the old regime could be making a comeback. They do after all still own nearly 10%.

It was not labor law they were trying to get around. The labor laws within the EU are quite complex, and the applicable laws are based on where the employee is based, not the location of the AOC. For example NAI crews based in LGW are employed under UK labor laws, not Irish labor laws. NAI crews based in MAD are employed under Spanish labor laws, not Irish. NAS crews based in CPH are employed under Danish law, not Norwegian. Same with the SAS Ireland crews based in LHR, they are employed under UK labor laws, not Irish. So the location of the AOC does not do much, if anything, to the labor laws.

NAI existed for three very specific reasons, and labor was not one of them. 1) Ireland has a very favorable environment for aircraft leases and corporate taxes. 2) It was an EU country that was a member of the Cape Town Treaty. 3) While having an EU AOC made no difference with regards to traffic right within Europe, or to the United States, as Norway was covered under those applicable treaties, having an AOC based within the EU did potentially open other traffic rights that Norway might not have been covered by, and Norwegian had the right to open other AOCs in EU countries due to being a member of the EEA. At the time NAI was formed, neither Denmark or Sweden had ascended to the Cape Town treaty, which would have made aircraft leases significantly more expensive, which is why Norwegian did not open AOCs in those countries despite the precedent for that having been set years ago by SAS. Since Sweden has ascended to the Cape Town treaty, Norwegian has opened the Swedish AOC and begun to move more aircraft to that AOC and away from NAI.

(Edit - While the European Union did ascend to the Aircraft Protocol of the Cape Town Treaty in 2009, there has been some debate about the applicability to EU members who have not individually ratify the treaty. Most EU countries have not individually ratified the treaty. Ireland was one of the original countries to ratify the Aircraft Protocol, even before the EU ascended to the treaty. At the time the NAI AOC was issued in 2014, the only EU countries to have ratified the treaty were Ireland, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. Since then, Denmark, Sweden, and Spain have ratified the treaty. The UK also ratified the treaty, but as we are all well aware, has also since left the EU. None of the other EU countries have individually ratified the treaty to date.)

Nice speech. And basically you are answering: “Ireland has a very favorable environment for aircraft leases and corporate taxes” 👍👍👍. Then again:

Why Norway should save Norwegian if they have been avoiding taxes in Norway?

What interest have Norway in routes like Barcelona - Tel Aviv, Gran Canaria - Madrid or Alicante - Hamburg? That could be called unfair conpetition if helped by the government.

What would you think if Vueling starts operating between Oslo and Stockholm, selling tickets at a very low price causing loses and then waiting for the Spanish government help to continue doing the same?

Labor COST is way higher in Scandinavia, and that was one of the reasons Kjos said he would never hire a Norwegian employee again. One of the main reasons why he created all these companies.The employees of these companies have paid no taxes to Norway.
The Norwegian Government wants to protect aviation in Norway, why should they pay for Thai staff, UK staff, Spanish staff, American staff, French staff, etc, and flights outside Norway? The best reason the new CEO came up with was: We fly the word "Norwegian" all over the world.
The same goes for the SAS Irland part, but that company is still a very small part of SAS.
You can also add union busting into this picture.

The CPH LH pilot's are the lowest cost long haul pilots in the company, even lower cost than the BCN and FCO pilots.

The question as to why the Norwegian government should pay money is moot, as they have already decided to fund up to 3 Billion NOK. You can speculate as to why, or the logic behind it, but the decision has been made, and it was made in the affirmative.

Every Norwegian base is unionized, so the union busting wasn't too successful was it?

What's funny is you guys are speculating so much about NAI being about labor costs, with zero hard evidence to back it up, but are ignoring the incredibly obvious and verifiable reasons why a company would want to have a division in Ireland. There is a reason why Ireland was called the "Celtic Tiger", there is a reason why so many corporations base their companies in Ireland, and labor costs have little to nothing to do with it. Facebook, Google, PayPal, Microsoft, and more than 700 other international companies base their European operations in Ireland, and the reason is overwhelmingly for its corporate tax rates. This is glaringly obvious, totally legitimate, and widely practiced, yet you conspiracy theorists totally ignore that in favor of a theory that does not hold up under even mild scrutiny. The AOC being based in Ireland does not do a bit of good at allowing Norwegian to work around labor laws for its UK based employees, or its Copenhagen based employees, or its Paris based employees. But it does a world of good at reducing corporate taxes, getting lower lease rates, and opening up some potential routes.

On top of that NAI is dying, and was dying long before Kjos left the building.

Those 3 billion NOK come with a lot of strings attached. I'm pretty sure there is a clause or two about how they can spend it. That is, if they can meet all the requirements in the first place.

They met the first hurdle, and many thought they would not be able to that.

10% of the money...

True, but a 10% that many analysts claimed they would not be able to get. Of course many of these same analysts have been swinging and missing on their predictions of imminent demise for the past five years.

They’re 60 BNOK in debt
Govt support at best 3 BNOK, with a fair few hoops to skip through. I’m not a wizard with numbers but I can not, for the life of me, see It happening. This is a dead horse that’s been flogged for far too long.

The "experts" have been saying that for five years. Seriously, CAPA reported that Norwegian was in an unsustainable position in February 2015. Yet Norwegian is still here. Obviously there is something going on behind the scenes that the "experts" are not fully aware of. Yet none of them have acknowledged that. I fully agree that things don't look good for them. But clearly there is a lot more to the financial dealings of Norwegian than many are aware of.