Page 31 - InterPilot 2018, Issue 4

PAGE 30 IFALPA.ORG PAGE 31
FOUNDING MA: NF
PAGE 31
Founding MAs:

Norsk Flygerforbund

COCKPIT ASSOCIATION OF NORWAY

BY CAPTAIN YNGVE CARLSEN Aviation contributed to shaping Norway as a nation. A new gen-
PRESDIENT eration of talented and brave aviation pioneers emerged. Only
four years after Cederstöms flight, Trygve Gran, a Norwegian
pioneer airman was the first to cross the North Sea in a Blériot.
His historic flight from Cruden Bay in Scotland to Jæren in Nor-
way, lasted 4 hours and 10 minutes. Both Fridtjof Nansen and
Roald Amundsen pioneered the legendary polar expeditions in
orway is one of several nations the 1920s. Having skied to the South Pole, they naturally showed
with a long and proud tradition of great interest in the concept of flying. On 12 May 1926, Amund-
flying. Less than seven years after sen and his Italian airship’s designer and pilot, Umberto Nobile,
the Wright brothers first powered carried out the first verified trip of any kind to the North Pole.
nflight at Kitty Hawk, 30,000 peo- The semi-rigid Italian-built airship was also the first aircraft to fly
ple gathered to watch the nation’s first maiden over the polar ice cap between Europe and America. In the sum-
flight as the Swedish baron Carl Cederström mer of 1928, Nobile tragically died in an accident in the north
took to the skies over oslo in a Blériot mono- area, and Amundsen was killed in an effort to save Nobile. In
plane on 14 october 1910. those days, Flight safety was most likely based on the will to Today’s Civil aviation, transporting approximately
survive. 4 billion people annually, is paramount to both our
modern society and the global economy. Aviation
Norway´s Civilian air traffic blossomed in the mid 1930´s, with has gone through some dramatic changes in the last
Widerøe, one of the oldest airlines in Norway, established in few decades. Although deregulation and liberaliza-
1934. For obvious reasons the civilian aviation industry experi- tion has led to increased mobility, reduced air fares,
enced a setback during World War II. After the end of the war, and a greater range of offers to the benefit of the
aviation in Norway entered a new era. Both Scandinavian Air- consumers - aviation professionals have experienced
lines Systems (SAS) and Braathens (which no longer exists, hav- the development with more negative consequences.
ing merged with SAS), were established in 1946. In a recent report entitled Civil Aviation in an Age of
De-Regulation, Social Risks and Benefits, the authors
An agreement was reached between the governments of Nor- Darragh Golden and Anders Underthun surveyed the
way, Sweden, and Denmark in 1946 to coordinate the Scandi- academic literature on the impact of deregulation in
navian aviation efforts. Scandinavian Airline System (SAS) was the civil aviation sector.
then founded to be able to take part in the rapidly expanding
international air traffic. During the next few decades, SAS was a Their findings portray an industry where the emer-
frontrunner in finding new ways to connect people from Scandi- gence of low-cost carriers, using sophisticated busi-
navia with the rest of the world. SAS pioneered scheduled traffic ness and employment models, in a bid to lower costs,
to Los Angeles by flying over Greenland in 1954, and as the first has been driving the airline industry in a negative
airline in the world to do it, in 1957 over the North Pole to Tokyo. direction. A 2015 Europe-wide study surveyed over
SAS was also the first airline to fly from Europe to Bangkok. 6,600 pilots and highlighted the unsavoury hiring
practices that European airlines indulge in. Ryanair
Many of these achievements were made possible because of has been the trendsetter, however, legacy carriers
highly competent Norwegian, Swedish, and Danish pilots, some have come under increased pressure to imitate the
of them with vast experience from the war. The fact that SAS low-cost model. In the 2015 study, known as the
had an international network early on meant that Scandinavian Ghent Report, its authors argue that such chicanery,
pilots also discovered the importance of having a global collec- which includes hiring pilots via temporary agencies,
tive mind-set. For this reason, it was quite natural for NF to be bogus self-employment, and even zero-hour con-
among the 13 founding members of IFALPA in 1948. Since its tracts, does not bode well for the airline industry and
founding, the Global Voice of Pilots has been the driving force in could irreparably threaten its reputation for safety.
promoting the highest level of aviation safety.