Originally Posted by
Colonel_Klink
Quite a number of interesting things came out of yesterday’s announcement.....
Firstly, people here probably should show a little more empathy to the fact that 750 people will be losing their jobs over the next 12 months. That will certainly be tough on the families that are involved. 750 jobs may only represent 7.5% of the workforce - but the fact is that is a significant number or head office staff. I personally don’t know how cutting those 750 jobs won’t have an impact on day to day operations of the airline. Will flight planners, load controllers, crew controllers, rostering staff be safe? And how will this affect things like the PBS and already problematic rosters that have the troops up and about? Having said all of that - there is definitely a glut of staff in the Village and in the other ‘Head Office’ overlooking Circular Quay.
It is good to see PS making the hard decisions - they certainly need to be made to ensure that this place survives. However there is something fundamentally wrong with the culture at Virgin and this relates to operational staff as well as the office staff. Some examples:
- Single runway operations in Sydney last week, 5 paxing cabin crew but no CS due to disrupt. Not one single cabin crew was happy to act up as CS - flight cancelled and 170 people now stuck in Sydney.
- A ludicrous situation where cabin crew can’t operate a MEL PER MEL return. I’m sick and tired of heading to PH and whilst I sit around for 2 hours before coming home, that all of the cabin crew get off or go to the hotel. Or the even more stupid case of the return operating cabin crew paxing over, and the operating cabin crew over paxing home.
- VA has training managers for every fleet. It has standards managers for every fleet. It has a manager who oversees the training managers and standards managers. It has a fleet manager for every fleet. It has a manager who oversees all the fleet managers. It has base managers in every base. It has a manager to oversee the base managers. It has a manager to oversee all the EBAs. And it finally has a GMFO who oversees all the managers who oversee the managers. (Confused yet?). When a Standards Manager of a fleet of 5 or 6 aeroplanes is on Check Captain pay plus 20% (give or take) one has to wonder if those roles are safe in this right sizing. One also has to wonder why when you have all these managers in training and standard, why you have Training FOs and Check and Training Captains writing sim profiles on admin days?
- You have the situation where managers aren’t using the staff car park and instead use Short Term car parks at a cost of I’d suggest $5k a year.
- This one I might cop some stick for - but when Sydney goes down to one runway, that is not the Company’s fault. When you hear multiple crews getting on to AMCO and telling them to tell crewing that they won’t be extending, you have to wonder. Now sometimes crew are legitimately tired, and they should get off the aircraft no questions asked. But when people decide at the start of the day before it all turns to crap that they won’t be extending, then perhaps that’s part of the culture issue too. Who does the ‘screw the company’ attitude really hurt? Ultimately every time you put a limit on FDPs in an EBA the Company will roster towards that. People forget that those increased FDPs were as a result of getting 23 days off in 56.
- There is a CHC base of over 50 pilots despite their only being 1-2 departures a day from that port.
Those are just some of the cultural and systemic issues surrounding this place. Unfortunately I think the pilots have become immune to this place losing money hand over fist - and that’s a problem. The new CEO has a massive task ahead of him, I hope for the sake of a lot of guys and girls careers, and the subsequent effect on families, that he gets it right.
Colonel Klink is right on. Couple more points, lot of disparagement in these posts and some who clearly don't fly on VA. (I am VA and QF plat). The VA Business class exceeds QF every time in catering. Flew QF business yesterday Cairns-Sydney; one white, one red wine. That's a choice? No salad. Seeded sourdough or seeded sourdough. Fly VA business often interstate and USA & HK. VA can't be beaten in J. I suspect international will go as well as Tiger, since the results show a decent profit on domestic and 7% revenue growth. Get rid of the stuff that doesn't work, and possibly even ditch the Virgin branding as this costs millions each year too.