Dim and Dumber.
What an unpleasant fellow you are, CaptKremin. Have you not discovered in your many, many years as a superior airline pilot, in between all those prostate massages from the unions sustaining your delusion, that you can get your point across without resorting to insult and buffoonery? If I didn’t know better, your personality as revealed here would lead one to believe you might be an Australian. Is that right, CaptKremin?
As the flying world now knows following the union driven fiasco of 1989 that resulted in all those bitter and twisted, southseas whining nincompoops being scattered to the four winds, Australians in general and pilots in particular, are famous for covering the distance from reasonable to reactionary radical at light speed. You make my point perfectly, for which thanks. OneWord22 makes reasonable arguments to my mind, which you meet with insult and derision. It was ever thus.
You just don’t seem to quite grasp the fact that because Aer Lingus is no longer free to suckle endlessly at the teat of the Irish State, it needs to pursue commercial success in order to survive. As shocking and unpalatable as this fundamental truth may be to an incorrigible union diehard such as yourself, there’s no escaping it. Aer Lingus is sitting on a gold mine, but poor Dermot’s efforts to run the company properly are being thwarted on several fronts.
First of all, short haul is haemorrhaging cash. Long Haul makes lots of lovely money. Lets pause there for a moment for that to sink in, shall we? Short bad, Long good. As much as this wisdom applies equally to the unfortunate, plastic numbskull that leads your turgid, moribund organisation IALPA, its basic maths I wish to celebrate with you now.
Aer Lingus has certainly made great strides in attracting customers by lowering its fares in a forlorn attempt at becoming a sort of lime-green version of Ryanair. Great stuff, so far. This demonstrates the other fundamental truth that seems to have escaped you; the CUSTOMER (remember them?) determines success or failure.
The only problem with this plan, though, is that you can’t compete with a monstrously successful airline like Ryanair by simply lowering fares when your cost base is high. You can compete on fares, but not on cost. This, my dear, has only one outcome in the long view, and I’m afraid it’s not a happy one.
Secondly, Dermot has to somehow massage all those bearded troglodytes of SIPTU into realising that their cash cow needs to transform itself into a racehorse, and in double quick time whilst fending off perfectly reasonable requests from its largest shareholder, or to put it another way, from Ryanair, the organisation who OWNS 30 percent of you. Add to this the interference, visible and not, of a bruised and politically wary Taoiseach, and poor Dermot is reaching for the extra strength aspirin…again.
Fundamentals of economics notwithstanding, the really tragic thing to watch from the safety of distance, is the sheer, unbridled stupidity and self-serving hubris with which you continue to pursue the downfall of your airline by means of suicide by union. The BFS base is a reasonable idea. You have nothing, absolutely nothing to say about it by way of complaint. Your fur-lined bubble is maintained status quo anti whilst your airline struggles to survive in a brutal, unforgiving market against highly able competitors who know what they’re doing.
When Aer Lingus fails, CaptKremin, thanks to you and those like you, and it certainly will unless IMPACT are dragged into the 21st century very quickly, you will surely not be surprised to find familiar faces wandering through all the green rubble as Openskies commences in March of next year.