Originally Posted by
davidjohnson6
If the Embraer costs were so high, how come the board agreed to it in the first place ?
Domineering CEO ? Corporate vanity ? Ignorance ? All three ?
In 2017, the CFO of Norwegian quit, at least showing he was competent... and deserving of being hired by another firm... he's now the Group CFO at Qatar Air
Partly because they fell into the usual trap of thinking a move to a larger aircraft was a logical step but mainly because of this ridiculous mantra that jet aircraft are superior and will result in more people flying with them.
Ultimately the majority of people want to fly for as cheap as possible regardless of any little niggles like noise from the plane. FR would have gone out of business long ago if it wasn’t for the fact that the price is paramount for travellers. I have said it a number of times on here that the q400 was BEs USP, and their whole business was built around it. Clearly BE had their pants taken down with the 195 deal, which was made even worse by the fact a market never materialised for them. They were just flown around in a desperate attempt to slightly reduce the lease costs. The 175 was never needed, and was purely bought to pander to the ridiculous notion that jets are superior. Which is why they were mainly flown out of BHX and MAN on routes where AF and LH competed. It was another ball and chain around BEs ankle that they didn’t need. If they stuck to just having the Q400 BE would probably still be around today, even with the numerous morons that have been in charge over the years. Perhaps they could have even picked up a few A220s by now to serve A few holiday routes like Wideroe and Binter have done with the E-2. Air Baltic are proving the a220 is a good aircraft for low cost travel but BE are predominately a regional carrier so only a couple like wideroe/binter have exploded themselves to would work. I remember quite clearly at the time the 175s were introduced that they had numerous options in place with the idea that they would replace all the q400s. Utter madness.