Norwegian Air Shuttle

     Norwegian Air Shuttle owns two subsidiaries. One is Norwegian Long Haul AS and the other is Norwegian Air International. NLH is in fact based and registered in Norway and operates out of Norway. It is Norwegian Air International that has been the topic of much controversy and recently was denied permission to operate flights to and from the U.S. Norwegian applied for a permit to carry passengers to the U.S. while they wait for the final DOT ruling, This is sort of a way for them to operate while their case is being processed, but it was denied. NAI is based in Ireland, uses Singaporean contracts for its flight crews and bases them in Thailand. By basing itself in Ireland, which is an active member of the US-EU Open Skies agreement, it would have the opportunity to fly a large number of flights to many destinations in the U.S. from Ireland. The sole existence of NAI is to provide extremely cheap long-haul airfare. They have bent over backwards in order to have the lowest possible labor costs. By hiring crews through contracts in Singapore, and basing them in Thailand, they are able to get around Norwegian labor laws. They have destinations abroad in New York, California, Florida, Bangkok, Dubai, and Iceland.

     U.S. carriers have a major bone to pick with NAI. For one, they are trying to undercut them in terms of price for transatlantic airfare. The United States airlines main issue is the fact that they are a Norwegian company but hardly any of their operation can be tied to Norway. They are outsourcing everything from certificates to pilots. The U.S. claims that by doing this there are serious safety concerns from hiring the cheapest crews but they are also concerned with losing market share to NAI. Basically, it is not the way to operate in their eyes and gives NAI an unfair labor advantage by hiring their pilots on third party contracts. ALPA has drawn the comparison of NAI also using a "flag of convenience" business model which essentially destroyed the U.S. maritime industry.

     The DOT recently denied a temporary permit of NAI to operate commercial flights to points in the U.S. on the premise that they need to further look into exactly what is going on with NAI in terms of their employment methods and whether or not they are abiding by the open skies agreement between the U.S. and European Union. I definitely agree with the decision to deny NAI any landing rights in the U.S. To enable this business model to succeed will only put downward pressure on our airlines to lower labor costs here. Not to mention, there is a major issue that hasn't been touched on too much. If NAI plans to have its operating certificate in Ireland but currently doesn't have any flights in or out of that country, how exactly will there be any oversight from the Irish aviation authorities? How will inspections on airplanes happen? Who is to blame if there is a dispute about wages not being paid, the agency that employed the pilots, or NAI? There are a lot of issues about being based in a country or three but not having any personnel there at all.

     If NAI is eventually allowed to operate to the U.S. there are a lot of concerns. We don't know exactly how much their pilots will be paid. For now, we can only speculate that by advertising one hundred dollar fares, they won't exactly be making a fortune. This will cause a downward pressure on pilots that have seen bankruptcies, recessions, and extreme turmoil over the past decade. The other issue is safety. Just how well trained will the people be who are willing to roll the dice and join NAI, be based in Bangkok, and fly the 787's that NAI will operate. Since they aren't under European labor laws, will they be working long hours and have little time off all for low pay? There are a lot of unanswered questions and the DOT is doing the right thing.

   


http://centreforaviation.com/analysis/norwegian-air-shuttles-long-haul-business-model-flag-of-convenience-or-fair-competition-146928

Civilian UAV

     Civilian use of UAV's has always been a controversial topic. As it stands now, there are only a few hundred FAA approved operations going on and they belong to Universities, Government agencies and a few private companies. The airspace is not getting any larger and the ammount of aircrafts in that airspace, whether manned or not, is only going to increase. Currently, civilian UAV's are used in several different ways. One interesting way is hurricane hunting. This is a very effective use for UAV's for several reasons. No pilot will be killed if there is a crash and also aircrafts do not fly in hurricane weather so the potential for mid-air collisions is very low. The UAV's are able to get in and take accurate measurements of windspeed and direction while they are in the hurricane. Another use is for search and rescue. They can be very costly, time consuming and potentially dangerous if there are no air strips to land at so using UAV's would be a practical solution in this arena as well. UAV's are regulated by the FAA. You need to obtain a special airworthniness certificate in the experimental category for a particular UAV. There are a lot of hoops to jump through to get this permission and to be able to operate a UAV legally.

     I forsee UAV's becoming more popular and joining the NAS as time goes on. There will definitely be tight restrictions and regulations on their operation, but I believe the FAA will make it more accessible to those who wish to begin using UAV's. I see them having a certain ceiling that they cannot go above or only allowing them to fly at certain times. There will always be the problem of them interfering with scheduled air carrier operations as well as general aviation. By limiting the ceiling or only allowing them specific windows of time to operate, the risk can be mitigated. There is also the possibility of using them for the wrong purposes whether it be terrorist activity or any sort of mischieveous intention. This risk may be harder to reduce especially as more and more UAV's take to the skies.

     Military strategy has definitely been affected in a positive way by the application of UAV's. Not only for reconaissance, but also some UAV's are equipped with missles and can destroy enemies on the ground. Their use by the military has no doubt saved countless lives because when a UAV gets shot down, a life is not lost on our side. Now we can send in a machine to do a job that was formerly done by humans. From a financial standpoint, instead of an extremely expensive fighter jet going into combat or a high flying recon jet, now a UAV smaller than a car can be deployed. The economic impact has been very positive.

     As of today, there are very few civilian jobs pertaining to the use of the UAV. We will eventually see more openings as jobs are created in the future. It will be a long time before there are schools or programs specifically suited for training civilian UAV operators, but this is a definite posibility one day. There are some jobs that are being done by people now, but one day that may shift towards a UAV only operation. One example I can think of is aerial surveillance. Why would a company pay for both the plane, pilot, gas, and all the costs associated with maintaining an aircraft when they can simply fly a UAV over the area that needs to be surveyed. There are some jobs that may never be done completely automated such as the airline industry. One of the interesting things to me is going to see just how big these UAV's will get and if there will ever be a limit on the size they can be. Time will tell, but as the rules relax and more UAV operations spring up, it will be interesting to see just how large the UAV's become. Perhaps they will designate airports as only for UAV's. That would be a great way to seperate traffic from UAV's.



http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/06/130606-drone-uav-surveillance-unmanned-domicopter-flight-civilian-helicopter/

https://www.faa.gov/uas/