Clinton weighs in on Norwegian Air dispute
The candidate urges rejection of carrier’s permit to fly to the U.S. from Ireland.
Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton has jumped into the dispute over whether Norwegian Air International is competing fairly against its U.S.-based rivals — and she is taking a position critical of the Obama administration.
Norwegian Air, a subsidiary of Norway-based Norwegian Air Shuttle, one of Europe’s biggest low-cost carriers, has been accused by U.S.-based carriers and their unions of skirting U.S. and European labor laws by establishing a base in Ireland but hiring pilots out of Asia to save money.
Norwegian has denied the charges, and a report by the U.S. Department of Transportation said the agency investigated and found no basis to deny Norwegian a permit to fly to the U.S. from Ireland on that basis.
Norwegian already flies from its base in Norway, but a base in Ireland would give the carrier greater access to U.S. airports.
Norwegian’s chief executive, Bjorn Kjos, urged the Obama administration to move ahead with the permit’s final approval, saying the low-cost airline will create “much-needed competition and affordable fares to consumers on both sides of the Atlantic.”
But Clinton’s labor campaign director, Nikki Budzinski, released a statement saying that Clinton was urging the Obama administration to reject Norwegian’s permit.
“Workers in the U.S. airline industry deserve rules of the road that support a strong workforce with high labor standards — not attempts by airlines to flout labor standards and outsource good-paying jobs,” Budzinski said.
Clinton rival Sen. Bernie Sanders also called on the federal government to deny Norwegian’s permit. “We must do everything we can to prevent a global race to the bottom in the airline industry,” he said in a statement.
No word yet if Republican nominee Donald Trump will side with the Obama administration or with Clinton and Sanders on the dispute.
LAX is slowest in getting to the gate
Perhaps the best moment in a commercial flight is when the plane lands safely and you know you are only minutes away from getting out of your cramped seat and into the terminal.
The bad news for passengers at Los Angeles International Airport is that it takes planes landing at LAX longer to get to the gate after touchdown than at any other major U.S. airport.
A study by MileCards .com, a website that compares loyalty reward programs, found that during the busy summer travel season, it takes planes at LAX an average of nearly 11 minutes to arrive at their gate after landing. In contrast, the shortest time from landing to gate is at San Diego International Airport — just under four minutes.
The delay in getting planes to their gates could be the result of a combination of factors, including an occasional shortage of gates and planes that land on outer runways having to wait for traffic on other runways and taxiways to clear before they can navigate to their gates, said Ian Gregor, a spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration. He also noted that LAX has also welcomed several massive new planes, including the A380, which are too big for certain taxiways.
The good news for Los Angeles fliers is that LAX did not get the top “misery score,” a ranking that combines on-time arrival rates, the time it takes between leaving the gate and taking off, and the time between landing and getting to the gate.
Based on the MileCards study, LAX ranked 12th in the misery score list, behind Newark, New York’s LaGuardia, Chicago O’Hare, New York’s JFK, Boston and San Francisco airports. At LAX, the on-time arrival rate in the summer is 77%, and the time between leaving the gate and taking off is about 16 minutes.
The airport with the lowest misery score was Mineta San Jose International Airport, where the summer on-time rate has been nearly 81%, and it takes an average of about 11 minutes between leaving the gate and taking off and only four minutes between landing and getting to the gate.