Originally Posted by
MelbourneFlyer
It is simply astounding to see unions lining up behind Cyrus. Either Cyrus have mastered some Svengali-esque powers or Steve has failed to look at Cyrus's outings at Virgin America and Flybe; perhaps both.
Cyrus has really only had two outings in the airline sector. The first was with Virgin America - ironically, a decidedly non-union enterprise. Their certification took years largely due to ALPA objections. Once VX managed to be certified only Spirit paid their crews less. It may have just been happenstance but VX was sold to AS within a year of it becoming unionised.
Then there's Cyrus's involvement with Flybe (the still-born Virgin Connect). The Connect consortium (40 percent Cyrus) bought Flybe in February 2019. By December it was apparent that there was a bit of a cash flow problem - the airline couldn't remit over £100 million in air passenger duty, money that they had already collected from passengers at the time of booking but which didn't need to be remitted until the time of travel. That rang some loud alarm bells. It was fairly clear that airline had been horrendously undercapitalised. 13 months after Connect had bought Flybe it was in administration.
I don't know what metrics the ALAEA applied when assessing Cyrus's credentials but I wouldn't have thought that the VX and BE experiences would have been necessarily endearing.