Originally Posted by
Cyrano
Companies fail for a variety of reasons, of which 'crappy management' is not the only one. If you have direct evidence that this is the principal reason for Eirjet's demise, OK, but otherwise isn't that a bit of a cheap shot?
OK perhaps I was a little harsh on the managment, but what I will say is that many resorts have mulitple changeover days and thursday and tuesday are usually pretty big ones. LTE & FCA managed to spread a weeks flying for ORK and SNN out of one a/c and associated crew base until eirJet showed up, trust me, when you are looking for flight out of regional airports, you DO NOT have a choice as to the day of the week.
I dont think that the managment were the only thing at fault here, but they did create a schedule which was at best, highly ambitious, and at worst an utter farce. This in turn did not help their credability. I think that the scheduling difficulties should have been ironed out after Summer 2005, but were ignored. That is bad managment. EI-DIJ also had a reputation as a 'hanger queen' when at Monarch, so the wisdom of taking on this a/c at a time when eirJet needed to build a strong and relaible brand was questionable. Maybe they took the risk of having a new but slightly terpermental plane Vs an older but slightly taty one. Im not sure that risk paid off.
This final part is purely speculation, but I am guessing that Excel managed to hoover up most, if not all of the Falcon/JWT flying for 2007 and eirJet had been depending on this. That business was the core of eirJets summer ops. Excel Ireland is mostly made up of ex Falcon guys, so its a pretty safe bet that they knew exactly what would get Excel the business. After that Im guessing that the bank pulled the plug.
Once again though I am really sorry for the crew at eirJet, but any reports I've seen or heard about the crews were highly complementary. Perhaps if the profile of the charters was more diverse, and the branding a little better, it would have been easier to expand.