Norwegian (Oslo Gardermoen) has announced that its Norwegian UK (London Gatwick) unit's application for a foreign air carrier permit has been granted tentative approval by the US Department of Transportation (DOT).

The UK-based carrier first lodged its application for exemption authority and a foreign air carrier permit in December 2015. However, like with Norwegian's now certificated Irish unit Norwegian Air International (Dublin International), the process has been drawn out owing to resistance from trade unions on either side of the Atlantic as well as legacy carriers such as Air France-KLM Royal Dutch Airlines and SAS Scandinavian Airlines. Collectively, they contended that Norwegian UK's application for exemption did not meet the public interest criterion for granting such authority.

In particular, they targetted its alleged failure to disclose its plans for the employment of pilots and flight attendants. As with Norwegian Air Int'l (NAI), they argued that if Norwegian UK were to use the same third-party crew contracting model as NAI, possibly in order to lower the wages and working conditions of its air crew, Norwegian UK’s application would not comply with Article 17 bis of the US-EU Open Skies Agreement, which covers labour standards. Without this information, they argued that the DOT would not have a sufficient record to make an adequate public interest determination, and thus cannot approve the permit request.

However, the DOT in its Show Cause order issued on Friday, July 14, states that the arguments put forward were already considered and rejected in the earlier NAI treatment.

"We tentatively see no persuasive basis on the record of the present proceeding to reach a different conclusion here. We further tentatively find that, in light of the applicable decisional parameters, we have an adequate record for decision without the need for the applicant to provide any additional information regarding its business plan and labor practices," it said.

An attempt to leverage the UK's impending exit from the European Union also failed to gain traction after the DOT said that as the UK is still part of the bloc, the terms of the US-EU Open Skies still apply and will continue to apply to Norwegian UK until such time that Brexit occurs. Additionally, even post-Brexit, the DOT says the United States and the United Kingdom have informally expressed the need for a seamless transfer of liberal, bilateral air transportation rights so as to avoid any disruption of services in the important US-UK market.

Commenting on the development, Norwegian CEO Bjørn Kjos said in a prepared statement: “Tentative US approval for our UK subsidiary takes us a positive step towards being able to offer millions of passengers even more new routes and lower fares. We look forward to final DOT approval for Norwegian UK’s foreign air carrier permit soon, allowing us to continue delivering more flights, more choice and more jobs on both sides of the Atlantic.”