Domestic flights in Norway, Sweden and Denmark affected by pilot strike in Norwegian

More than 35,000 customers in Scandinavia will tomorrow be affected by the pilot strike at Norwegian. Ever since the weekend, Norwegian’s management has been trying to get a solution with Norwegian Pilot Union (NPU) and the union Parat to prevent that even more passengers are affected, without success.

Despite repeated attempts by Norwegian’s management to bring about constructive talks to avoid escalation of the strike, it has unfortunately not been possible to achieve a dialogue. As a result, all domestic flights in Norway, Sweden and Denmark will be cancelled tomorrow, Wednesday 4 March. All flights between the Scandinavian cities are also cancelled.

Norwegian would like to apologise to all passengers who are affected by these cancellations. We will do utmost to take care of all our passengers the best possible way. Passenger who have registered their mobile phones numbers on their Norwegian profiles, and who are affected by the strike, will be notified via SMS from Norwegian. We urge all passengers to keep themselves updated via Norwegian’s website and check the Flight Status for information on specific routes.

We wish to advise that the following flights should operate according to schedule tomorrow, Wednesday 4 March 2015:

• Flights to/from the UK with flight numbers DY2400 to DY2900
• Flights to/from Spain with flight numbers DY5100 to DY5598
• Flights to/from Finland with flight numbers DY5599 to 5999
• Flights to/from USA and Thailand with flight numbers DY7001 to DY7999

Background for the conflict
The conflict applies to Norwegian’s Scandinavian subsidiary, Norwegian Air Norway (NAN).

Prior to the mediation, Norwegian had proposed several essential cost reductions to ensure a sustainable company and secure jobs in the future. Unfortunately, NPU/Parat did not meet these criteria. Instead, they had demands that conflicted with the collective agreement signed in 2013. NPU’s goal has been to control the company and the company’s production, obtain a collective agreement in a company they are not employed by, and that the Norwegian collective agreement should also apply outside Norway. Norwegian could not agree with the requirement of a common seniority list for all pilots; i.e. seniority in a company they are not employed in. In practice, this would mean that Scandinavian pilots could have an unfair advantage over colleagues at other bases in Europe.

We will do our utmost to ensure that all affected passengers are taken care of in the best possible way according to EU Regulation 261/2004.

Press Release  •  Mar 03, 2015 21:00 GMT