ksu

You made the claim: "Domestic flying in Norway won't get any better until someone finds a way around overpaying staff." You thus imply that domestic flying in Norway is bad, in a way that can be fixed by paying staff less. You made the claim, so it's up to you to present the arguments for this claim.

As for competition: Norwegian, Flyr and Widerøe all compete directly with SAS, flying on commercial terms on domestic routes in Norway

Domestic air travel is just that, domestic. Salaries have to be comparable to other workers' salaries in Norway, because there's where the jobs are based. Polish carpenters coming to Norway are paid the same rate as Norwegian carpenters. When teachers' salaries are negotiated, they are not negotiated according to tha salaries in equivalent Western European countries.

FlyingMoose

I didn't say it was terribly bad, I just said that it won't get better unless companies can compete on pay. If company A can operate a leaner ship than an incumbent with lower wages (but perhaps other benefits) then it can invest in its product and service and compete there and win the consumers choice.

Companies not being able to find ways to compress pay can not alleviate capital to improve products and service and innovate for customers. Otherwise competition isn't really competition but a series of companies offering the same -bad- product and service which isn't helping anyone.

It also keeps the artificially high cost of living of Norway high.

Are you saying you want a disproportional and artificially high cost of living and no companies that compete with a better product and service for ksu the consumer?

ksu

That's a strawman if I ever saw one! :-)

Companies wanting to do business in Norway have to sell and buy in the same market, i.e. they have offer salaries making it possible for their employees to actually earn enough to live in Norway. The challenge of having workers from low-income countries competing for work with Norwegians in transportation is a well-known scenario from shipping, leading to the dual ship registries (NOR/NIS) from 1987.

Companies, including airlines, are certainly welcome to offer higher salaries, better benefits to their employees and they are certainly allowed to offer better services to their passengers if they want to. For example. the newest competitor, Flyr, offer very competitive prices, and for full fare passengers, they can guarantee a free middle seat, a major inconvenience when flying SAS. When I had to find alternative transportation to Rome during the strike, the good price and the free middle seat were the major selling points for ksu the consumer. It is also claimed that paid business on long leisure routes (Asia) sells rather well in Norway, so the Norwegian market, at least a segment, is prepared to pay extra for better quality,

FlyingMoose

As a consumer I prefer the kind of competition that gets me the same or better product for a better price, buying a better product for a higher price is the easy part that can always be done.

What we're seeing in Norway and Scandinavia specifically is primarily competition in the form of lower price but worse product which is a regression of the product. Most people want to enhance their living standard and not reverse it. The obvious solution is to find means to compress pay and use those resources to improve the product, there are various examples of other industries having done this in the past successfully for the better of the consumer.

Norway can of course hang onto its outdated concepts but I'm surprised people aren't more invested in having better flying products and routes available from what is one of the richest countries in the world? It also makes labor immigration pointless or only to fill up the workforce rather than to reduce the cost of goods and services.

GUWonder

I’m not sure what regression of product value I’m seeing more of in Scandinavia than in the land of the free for government to try to scare doctors out of practicing medicine with the patients’ wishes and privacy paramount. SAS had already taken things down by charging even for drinking water in-flight, making the food situation awful in the main cabin, slashing/eliminating free checked baggage for a lot of ticket types, and making seating in the main cabin less comfortable than it used to be.

At least they are back to paying for some more contemporary movies for IFE again. And isn’t in-flight WiFi also now more available than it used to be when SAS started to charge for water in-flight?

CPH-Flyer

Where is competition getting you a better product? Domestic US is awful service with flight attendants that hate all customers. Asian airlines still provide great service in a lot of markets, but that is actually more about the absence of competitors and high pricing. European airlines are certainly not competing on quality. Middle Eastern Airlines kind of are competing on quality, but I'd love to do a full scale audit of their books.

nacho

The problem with a lot of Scandinavians is that they have great lives at home, so they don't mind suffering a bit when they go travelling. A lot of them would not want to pay for comfort and complimentary items, and in terms of checked bags, they will pay for it if they need it. Personally I don't understand that mentality but these people are their main clients, not us. A lot of people don't even bother factoring the final cost in (like 2 beers, 2 sandwiches and 2 checked bags will add up another couple of hundreds kroner) - they won't even look. Look at how many of them are buying drinks on board and that's where the $ is. Also, why not charge for drinks if people don't mind paying?

LH short haul started charging for everything except water, not everyone took it on my flight and saw Scandinavians happily paying for beer and wine. I didn't know about this changes (I haven't flown LH for a long time) and it seems that the intra-European services are worse than AC and UA.

A lot of holiday houses here in Scandinavia are like youth hostels without sheets and bed linens, where are the Residence Inns/Staybridge Suites etc.? Also a lot of the luxury hotels in Scandinavia are not as good as the luxury hotels e.g. in Germany.

I think the all inclusive mentality only works on taxes (a lot of people support the raising taxes to improve services provided by the government).

FlyingMoose

I find US Domestic First Class to be a much better product than any intra-EU Business or Plus service and often better priced. This unfortunately has nothing do with competition. My point was more towards how other industries have added competition and made products better and cheaper. Innovation like Uber, AirBnB, DoorDash have drastically improved the preceding version of those products or in the case of Uber vastly diffused the through and through rotten taxi industries in many EU countries. It is time we see something similar in aviation. The current version of competition does nothing for me as a consumer. Having RyanAir, Norwegian or EasyJet flying the same routes as other Full Service airlines without Business Class and Alliance affiliation give me no valid competitive alternatives.

I fully agree about Asian Airlines and ME Airlines.

Fredrik74

Ryanair is the distruption you're asking for. They've helped reshape the aviation market and lowered prices for almost all travellers.

nacho

I don't think Airbnb makes hotel prices lower or provides more service (at least in CPH area). I'd love to have a full service airline in Scandinavia to compete with SAS, the problem is that there's not enough customers in the Scandinavia market to sustain an airline likes this.

All companies Mr. worked for and including the one he is working at currently have travel policies stating clearly that they need to take deep discounted Y to go anywhere. His current employer even specified to tell everyone to book non-refundable tickets to avoid extra cost. I went through 8 pages of their corporate travel policy - basically telling what you are (not) allowed to do, e.g. you are not allowed to take a taxi from your home to the airport, you are allowed to take a taxi to the nearest train station that goes to the airport. If there's such airline charges 150DKK more (with more things included) I don't think Mr would be allowed to fly with them on business. I don't think that airline can survive with purely leisure customers and maybe consultants/pharma sales.

My conclusion is to give my $ to the airline that I like the most, even if it means I don't fly direct.

the810

You must be trolling us...

CPH-Flyer

That is the exact point of the European Air travel market, it was disrupted by Easyjet and Ryanair to point to the early entrants that are still around. It lead to a revolution in airtravel costs levels, but also obliterated services along the way.

Uber did one good thing for the taxi industry, it added the concept of booking via an app. In some countries the concept was really used to improve services as it added accountability, though interestingly it was often not truly Uber driving the change, but rather a local company taking the lead and basically crushing Uber in the process. I am not sure I see one thing coming from Airbnb that has added a benefit or improvement to my travel experiences more broadly.

We may not like the direction that the disruption has taken European airtravel, but the consumers in general does seem to like it. So that is what we get for it.

The question was not really whether US first class is better or worse than European business class, the question was did competition make US first class a better product? After due consideration I can think of 1 point where competition did lead to a clear improvement, United transcon PS service. But that was an awful long time ago, and since then competition has also gradually eroded that product down to a shadow of what it started as. Price is just the name of the game, and once that is the case it is not about improving services. It is about simplifying processes, outsourcing, finding cheaper suppliers, getting more people on the same aircrafts, turning over every penny and see if there is a way to keep it.

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FlyingMoose

Uber did many more good things. It made the cost of fares available upfront and no more metered nonsense. It made credit card payments the default including AMEX acceptance and no more scammy taxi drivers that would tell you they'd accept credit card at departure but not on arrival. It has done wonders for parking availability because the cost of a taxi for a lot of travel in cities is the same as driving + parking and it removed a lot of drinking and driving because taking a taxi is no longer cost prohibitive in mostly Western countries.

CPH-Flyer

But then it also made the surge nonsense a thing for a while which was mainly a scam for them to make money rather than actually getting more cars on the street.

Did Uber ever become a thing in Sweden? If yes, what were the effects? Sweden is one of the countries were free competition on taxis never caused any benefits for the consumers. Literally only made it worse to be a taxi consumer, though credit cards was always a thing....

nacho

I used Uber once in DC from Pentagon City to Rosslyn bus station, ended up paying about 100% more than the quoted price. I'm not taxi person so I have no idea how much I would have saved compared to using a taxi.