Status and scope
The comparison is unusually clean because the 2025 Norse agreement is a ratified successor agreement rather than a rejected proposal or a side-letter patchwork. The prior agreement became effective on November 22, 2022 and was amendable on November 22, 2024. The successor agreement became effective on May 14, 2025 and remains in force through May 14, 2028 unless reopened under Article 22.
Structurally, both agreements keep the same basic model: block-hour compensation, a 60-hour monthly guarantee, regulator-driven scheduling limits, framework benefits language, and a standard grievance/System Board architecture. The 2025 agreement improves that framework in several important ways, but it does not convert Norse into a heavily hard-capped or reserve-dense U.S. legacy-style contract.
Pay scale and early-career economics
The clearest improvement is economic. In Article 3, the prior wage table ran through the October 1, 2024 scale, including 1st year at $36.71 and 10th year at $52.21. The 2025 agreement replaced that table with a May 14, 2025 scale showing 1st year at $37.99 and 10th year at $54.04, followed by additional May 14, 2026 and May 14, 2027 increases. That is a real raise across the scale, even before considering the allowances and other premium changes.
Article 3 also materially improves travel-compensation economics. Per diem rises from $3.25 per hour to $4.25 at DOR and $4.50 at DOR+2, and the earning window expands from departure-to-arrival to check-in-to-check-out. Bought Day Off pay changes from a flat $135 per day to four block hours above guarantee, which scales upward with the hourly rate and is generally more valuable at most pay steps. Day Off Encroachment pay remains tied to the hourly rate above guarantee, but the cap increases from four hours to six hours.
Article 3 further adds recurring monthly allowances that did not exist in the prior agreement: a uniform allowance of up to $25 per month and a communications allowance of up to $15 per month. The parking/alternate transportation section also adds a transportation reimbursement program allowing CCMs to cover transportation expenses to and from base using pre-tax income, with the Company matching contributions up to $50.
Not every compensation change is an across-the-board gain. The prior agreement expressly paid Inflight Trainer-qualified CCMs $7 per block hour when performing those duties. The 2025 agreement keeps the Purser override and GI formula, but it does not preserve that same explicit Inflight Trainer premium in the body of Article 3.
Reserve quality of life and day-to-day work rules
Norse still does not read like a fully matured U.S. reserve contract. In both agreements, Article 6 states that the Company and the Union will meet and negotiate on scheduling, including bidding and reserve. That means the core reserve/bidding architecture remains underdeveloped in the CBA text itself, and many classic U.S. contract comparison points still defer to aviation-authority rules rather than being fully hard-coded in the agreement.
Even so, there are quality-of-life improvements. The 2025 agreement adds a roster-accuracy commitment requiring all hours of duty to be accurately reflected on the crew member’s roster, including pickup time, deadhead time, check-in time, and check-out time. It also adds a 120-minute check-in requirement for security-search flights, paired with one hour of Security Pay above guarantee in Article 3. That longer report time is a burden, but at least the new agreement expressly pays for it.
Rest and travel standards also improve. Both agreements preserve Class 1 inflight rest with duration governed by regulations, but the 2025 agreement adds more detailed rest and hotel language elsewhere in the document and in related bargaining materials. Positioning amenities improve too: the prior agreement promised a confirmed ticket, seat with meal, and one checked bag, while the 2025 agreement adds one carry-on.
The main limitation is structural. Norse’s 2025 agreement improves pay around disruption and improves some living-and-travel conditions, but it still does not provide the kind of detailed bid-line, reserve, and reassignment control language that would let this page describe it as a fully built-out scheduling-rights contract.
Insurance, healthcare, and leave
The benefits framework remains broadly consistent. Article 18 in both agreements provides a Benefits Plan including health insurance, dental, vision, travel insurance, short-term disability, and life insurance, and both agreements say the plans shall not be diminished without union consent. So the structural healthcare model remains framework-based rather than benefit-schedule-heavy.
The clearest gains appear in leave administration rather than health-plan design. Sick leave rises from seven paid sick days per year to ten paid sick days per year. The 2025 agreement also adds sick-day donation and allows 50% of unpaid sick days to be credited back as unused vacation, rounded up. Pregnancy language is more flexible too: the prior agreement started pregnancy leave at sixteen weeks, while the 2025 agreement allows leave at sixteen weeks or up to twenty-six weeks with a doctor’s note.
The trade-off is tighter administration. In the prior agreement, daily value for personal, vacation, and sick days was two block hours and deductions for excess personal and sick days were one hour per day. In the 2025 agreement, excess sick days are deducted at three block hours per sick day, and a doctor’s note is required after more than three consecutive sick days, due to HR within 72 hours after initially reporting the illness. The 2025 agreement also adds an explicit whole-day-utilization rule barring partial or hourly use of sick days, personal days, and vacation.
So the leave package is better overall, but it is better in a controlled way. More paid sick time and more conversion flexibility came with stricter documentation and stricter usage rules.
Bidding, scheduling, operational travel, and charter rules
Several provisions improved without changing the underlying philosophy. Both agreements keep a minimum of twelve days off per month and continue strong day-off movement protection after schedule publication. The 2025 agreement keeps those basics and adds a more developed statement of intent around lines of flying, bidding, swapping, and roster accuracy.
But there is one narrow concession that matters. In the prior agreement’s ground transportation section, transport time exceeding 60 minutes before or after scheduled activities was treated as block hours. That explicit pay-credit protection no longer appears in the new ground transportation section. For most pairings this will not be the main economic driver, but in long transport-to-training, medical, or positioning scenarios, it is a real rollback of explicit pay protection.
Article 21 on Charters is the other major trade-space item. It adds clarity and some protections: bidding in seniority order, guaranteed days off at home base, transportation help for certain U.S. positioning, day-off sale language, and a volunteer-only rule for active war zones or hostile political environments with hazard pay. But it also formalizes an involuntary backstop. If there are not enough volunteers, charter flying can be ordered in reverse seniority order. That is not a minor drafting point. It is a real new assignment mechanism that comes bundled with the improved charter protections.
Retirement provisions
Retirement is an uncomplicated improvement. Article 18 preserves the 401(k) structure in both agreements, including annual enrollment, immediate vesting of employee contributions, and a three-year vesting ladder for company contributions. The meaningful change is the employer match. The prior agreement matched 100% of the first 3% of employee contributions. The 2025 agreement raises that to 100% of the first 4%.
That is not a structural reset, but it is a clean and durable economic gain. It increases long-term compensation without adding interpretive ambiguity.
Enforcement, job security, and what stayed mostly the same
On grievance and arbitration, the architecture is largely continuous. The grievance filing windows, probationary carve-out, hearing structure, and System Board model remain substantially intact across the two agreements. That means Norse still relies on a standard retrospective enforcement model rather than on broad liquidated-damages or self-executing penalty provisions.
Core scope and job-protection language also remain intact. The successor agreement preserves direct-employment language, U.S.-based staffing protections, anti-cross-craft language, and the baseline no-furlough-if-below-50%-U.S.-staffing structure. The main job-security additions are elsewhere: stronger base-closure protections and a higher involuntary-transfer moving-expense cap, up from $3,000 to $5,000.
The most important status-quo point is this: even after a materially better economic round, Norse still pays primarily by block hour, still keeps a 60-hour monthly guarantee, still defers many detailed scheduling limits to regulators, and still uses a conventional grievance/System Board framework. The 2025 agreement is meaningfully better, but it is not a wholesale rewrite of the contract model.
Bottom line
The 2025–2028 Norse agreement is a real improvement over the 2022–2024 agreement. The most material gains are in base pay, per diem, monthly allowances, bought-day-off value, day-off encroachment protection, retirement match, and a collection of travel and rest standards. Those are meaningful gains, not cosmetic ones.
The concessions are narrower but still real: stricter sick documentation, a larger excess-sick deduction, whole-day-only leave utilization, likely loss of the older explicit long-ground-transport pay-credit rule, and a new reverse-seniority fallback for charter assignments when volunteers are insufficient.
What remained mostly the same is just as important for contract architecture. Norse still operates inside a framework-heavy system where many scheduling mechanics are not yet fully spelled out in the CBA itself. That means the 2025 agreement should be understood as a materially improved version of the same contract model rather than a full structural re-architecture.