It is an interesting comment on our corporate world that one of the few people to make any significant money out of the airline (excluding salaries) has just left the building having made millions over and above his already generous salary, in an environment where shareholders saw a significant fall in the value of their holdings and funded massive losses.
it is also interesting that said person’s corporate bedfellow also oversaw the virtual destruction of a certain unnamed middle eastern airline and ‘joined together’ (look up joined together in Arabic) with a ragtag bunch of airlines which almost without exception have fallen over or are close to it (maybe with the exception of VA which does not appear to be quite as tenuous as say an Indian carrier who shall remain nameless but has many ‘jets’ grounded due to lack of lease payments.)
i wonder how much they bounced ideas off each other.
That said the strategy may have been generally ok, though it has to be said that the predictions that Virgin Blue in its original guise was doomed to fail have to be viewed in the context of the fact that it made more profit during the 10 or so years of its existence prior to the management change (I won’t say leadership) in an environment where it was expanding exponentially than it did over the following 8 years when the airline was repositioned in the market but where growth stagnated.
An OK strategy though doesn’t mean a lot if the execution is flawed. I expect that the last 8-9 years or so will become a study in how NOT to do things and someone will write what will become a university management school text book like Worst to First by Gordon Bethune or A Splash of Colors: The Self-Destruction of Braniff International by John J Nance (a book which details many similarities to a certain airline I might add).
The staff have done their bit (for the most part) to try and make this work but the fish rots at the head and I hope the new guy has a good head in his shoulders and doesn’t come in with a cut costs mindset otherwise we will end up like QR with even fewer staff and resources and a massive hurdle to overcome to get things back on track (pardon the rail metaphor)
i wait with baited breath