Hi everybody,
First of all many thanks folks. It was a privilege to enjoy such an outstanding supportive, dedicated and loyal workforce. This outstanding support helped tremendously and might pay off for a project “Phoenix”. The demise of Cargo Lion certainly wasn’t caused by high salaries or any lack of professionalism.
Critics against management: I started my aviation charier as a pilot who thought, like many of you, that it would be easy to improve a lot of things the management does. Believe me it’s not that easy. Being the boss doesn’t give you free decisions, it means considering many different options/opinions and to stick to rules. That has absolutely nothing to do with the "head in the sand syndrome" or the "I know better than everyone else" syndrome. People who believe that haven’t understood anything yet.
Bozzo, it’s simply not true that Cargo Lion went through many contracts because of maintenance. Cargo Lion mainly operated short to medium term contracts. The main problems for Cargo Lion aside from the unfair conditions in Europe were the DC10 (see below) and a problem caused by Timco. The person responsible for that in-house lost his job over that.
The acquisition of aircraft isn’t a simple task. Firstly, we didn’t get the DC10 without contract. In a ‘chicken and situation’ we still had some business lined up but became victim of our clients diminishing market. The DC10 wasn’t the aircraft of first choice but the best option within realistic reach. In our case a 747-200 wouldn’t have worked either.
B747-400 (or even MD11): We would have loved to get a big fleet. It was just a matter of the required pocket money. In Europe you can’t go to the stock market as easily as in the US to get mega millions.
EU/JAA/JAR: One shouldn’t blame any business taking advantage of the policies of the EU. They are quite right to exploit this lack of understanding by the JAA. While having created a quite good platform to increase aviation safety with the JARs the JAA and the EU have destroyed the same by allowing any third world (or wanna be third world) or other foreign carrier take any business in the EU. The US got it right: by enforcing a foreign carrier licensing they same rights and duties for everybody.
A word about the rogue carriers free allowed in Europe. It is not a question whether their management or staff are professional or not. The point is that they operate outside of any real aviation authority supervision and in the tough competition of our market they are forced to cut corners. Thus the lack of expensive spares and/or tired professionals diminishes safety.
The aim of a foreign air carrier licence in the EU would not be to ban such carriers but to help them to enforce better standards. The result would be an improved and safer market for all of us.
BeePee
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Diesel 8 forever!