Norwegian Air International

The company is based in Ireland to avoid the labor laws in Norway and they will not fly to or from Ireland. The pilots will be “rented” from Singapore and based in Thailand. Also, the pilots will have individual employment contracts that do not allow collective bargaining and contain wages and working conditions that are far below the pilots who fly for NAI’s parent company. Their destinations are Thailand, Europe, New York, and Fort Lauderdale. And in 2014, NAI had plans to expand its flights to Europe and New York, San Francisco, Fort Lauderdale, Los Angeles, and Orlando.

The US Carriers oppose NAI, because NAI can lower their fares, because they have shopped around for lower working standards. So it gives NAI an unfair advantage over any US carrier that is competing for the International business. NAI just doesn’t pose a threat to the US carriers, but all airlines in the global market. But for the routes into the US, the US carriers would not be getting the international business, because NAI would have their fares so low that US carriers cannot compete.

The DOT denied NAI request, because NAI isn’t fair competition in the international market. I do agree with the decision, because if they are allowed to operate into the US, then it will for the most part kill the domestic carriers. If you allow this type of carrier to enter the US, then there will be 100 that will pop-up overnight following the same business model and these companies will be doing international and domestic flight in the US. Then it will be one set of rules for carriers like NAI and another for companies like Delta or American, which isn’t fair and will put Delta and American out of business. Another problem I have with the business model of NAI is: all NAI is doing is trying to skirt the laws, but a big problem for governments is if something goes wrong who is held responsible. Is Ireland responsible, because that is where NAI has their certificate of operations from? Or is it Singapore, because that is where the pilots are being “rented” from?

The ramifications of NAI if they are granted to operate in the US is: they are going to put our domestic carriers out of business, because other companies will start adopting the same business model as NAI. There will be only flights to airports that are going to make the company money and it will just be inconvenient to the people here in the US. All NAI will do is kill the US airline economy, which will only hurt our overall economy, which we do not need.

 

Links

http://www.alpa.org/Portals/Alpa/PressRoom/PressReleases/2014/2-5-14_14.11.htm

http://www.alpa.org/Portals/Alpa/deptpages/govtaffairs/issues/nai/NAISchemeInfoGr.htm

UAVs

Applications for UAVs in the civilian world would be like: pipeline inspection, hurricane monitoring, traffic monitoring, aerial surveying, volcano monitoring, forestry inspection, oil spill tracking are just to name a few. In the United States for small UAVs you have to acquire a Certificate of Authorization (COA) through the FAA, but currently these certificates are only limited to federal, state, and local government agencies, and restricted flying to specified areas. The typical requirements for acquiring a COA include: Flights below 400 ft. agl, daytime operation in VFR conditions, range limited to Visual Line of Sight, and greater than 5 miles from an airport.

 

I do foresee UAVs integrating into the NAS, but for the use as I have stated above. I don’t think that there will ever be a demand for UAVs for the airlines, but maybe for some of the large cargo companies like UPS or FedEx. The problem I see with UAVs are when you start putting people in the skies with UAVs flying around and someone has not seen on and gets up close so they can get a picture. Plus, if a person is behind the controls they can only see what is shown on the screen in front of them so there is no sense of situational awareness where when you are the person flying the plane you are constantly looking around.

 

I would say that with the introduction of UAVs that it has changed military strategy. It has changed their strategy by arming the UAVs and taking out High Value Targets so then we don’t have to send in a plane that has a human on board. It also lets us stay over a target area for hours instead of only a few hours or minutes with the human-piloted planes or the satellites orbiting the earth. I would say that there integration has been efficient if you can send in a UAV that can stay on station for 10-12 hours instead of a pilot who is getting tired after 2 hours, then you are being more efficient cause then you don’t have to send up 1 or 2 more planes to do the job of just 1 UAV. Also, since the most of the UAVs are armed and with their long operation time that they can potentially become a game changer if your troops are under heavy attack.

 

Link to a job for UAV pilot at General Atomics https://sjobs.brassring.com/TGWebHost/jobdetails.aspx?jobId=792465&&JobReqLang=1&recordstart=1&JobSiteId=5313&JobSiteInfo=792465_5313&GQId=0&PartnerId=25539&SiteId=5313#4023BR

 

http://www.uavm.com/uavapplications.html