Cc: Commissioners Violeta Bulc and Marianne Thyssen

9.3 million jobs in danger!

We request a firm stance of the new European Commission against abuses of European social standards in the field of aviation!

A new airline has been established called “Norwegian Air International” that wants to offer scheduled services from the UK to the US. They have received an Irish license for this and they intend to employ crewmembers from Thailand that are hired through aSingaporean agency.

Competition in aviation is intense and it keeps us sharp. However, through businessmodels like this we risk entering a downward spiral to the social bottom, risking thousands of qualified European jobs. European aviation currently provides 9.3 million jobs and adds 512 bn Euros to European GDP.

Your new Commission has chosen the strengthening of Europe’s competitiveness as its no. 1 priority and wants to give a stronger boost to jobs, growth and investment.

How can the Commission strengthen aviation’s competitiveness if it allows such abusesof European standards?

If we allow Norwegian Air International to start employing Thai crew on the EU-USroutes, others will soon follow and jobs will be lost inside the European Union andcreated elsewhere. In the maritime sector we have already seen this same scenarioplay out, resulting in the loss of tens of thousands of jobs. It would be foolish to let the same happen to aviation. Therefore we need your support.

We count on you!
The US has temporarily denied Norwegian Air International’s request for a foreign carrier permit. The European Commission should now take a strong stance and prevent Norwegian Air International from abusing European social standards and legislation through employing Thai crew. We need to preserve European jobs instead of outsourcing them to other continents.

If the European Commission is serious about its jobs and growth commitment, we deserve your support. 9.3 million aviation colleagues count on you. Signed on November 21, 2014 by

The addition of Norwegian and Russian allows KLM to offer even better service in  those markets. After all, Norway is an extremely important market for KLM. Following the addition of Ålesund last April, KLM now flies to seven Norwegian destinations. And social media are hot in Russia. Many Russians are plugged into Facebook, Twitter and their very own platform, VKontakte (vk.com). It is for this reason that KLM has chosen to provide extra service to its Russian customers on this growing platform. It makes KLM one of the first companies in Russia to use social media as part of its customer service.

KLM now provides service on Facebook and Twitter in nine languages: English, Dutch, Spanish, German, Japanese, Portuguese, Italian, and now Russian and Norwegian as well. To provide even better service to more customers, KLM will continue to expand the number of languages.