How come regional airlines seem to be lions led by donkies? Excuse the cliche but all their bosses seem to have amazing similarities; autocrats, penny pinchers, unwilling to listen to staff,hateful of training expenditure,great suckers-up to their bosses,track record of taking companies into liquidation, developing a "blame and punish" culture.
Eg, one CEO oversaw Alidair,Birmingham Exec(cant remember exact name) go to the wall,was allegedly kicked out with literally ten minutes notice to get off the premises of both Gill Airways and Jersey European (Flybe) having taken them to the edge but not conducted himself properly(twice).
Another took a small regional based in Dundee and then Air Ecosse into liquidation. He was then put in charge of Gill and very shortly saw it being sold for £1. Yet he was kept on as commercial manager and later despite many stupid decisions and later seeing Gill incur a £20,000,000 loss in one year he was still kept on.
These and other managers of other current regional airlines seemed obsessed with penny pinching yet are very much pound foolish.Tales of huge waste abound (keep quiet Emerald crews!).
If something goes wrong which is frequently they always have to blame and punish someone else. It never has anything to do with them.This blame culture is extremely bad for air safety as everyone tries to cover up mistakes. As we all usually there are several similar incidents that precede an accident.
Also most of them have nil in the way of qualifications. How do they manage to get these positions?