Originally Posted by Say again s l o w l y
How can you take a company with good long term contracts, little or no debt, low operating costs and over heads and kill it in such a short period of time?
It's dead easy, and can't all be blamed on the Mobster
The Company actually made a sensible strategic decision - that the 748s and Sheds will not fly for ever and they needed to be replaced over a period of time. However they completely messed up the implementation of this strategy by
a) a stupid decision to relaunch passenger services and as a result
b) trying to bring in too many ATPs at once
c) being penny wise pound foolish - spending less on the ATPs they actually bought and then having to spend a fortune on converting them
d) Allowing a "mini-me" version of the Mobster to run Blackpool, and making a poorly run operation worse
e) Selling out the ATPs to customers and then finding the planes weren't ready for months - so contracts were either lost or Emerald had to run them at a loss (via a combination of 748s and Sheds)
f) winning contracts without a thought of how they were going to be crewed, serviced etc (eg Paris-Vienna)
Bottom line is that the company would have gone under in 4-5 years (or had to sell to a competitor) without bring newer aircraft in, but the cack-handed way they went about this hastened its demise. Sadly, the staff, and some of the small businesses which serviced the company (who are even lower down the creditor list than the employees) will be the ones that suffer most.