Is this the armchair airline executives forum? Most of the crap being posted on here should be in Airlines, Airports & Routes forum or better still, Spotters Balcony!
Apart from those pilots who are employed by or have been employed by Virgin, the rest of the comments on here look like a bunch of know it all enthusiasts who, apart from reading Airliners Monthly, have about as much knowledge of what Virgin pilots T's & C's are about as a pimple on your bum knows about brain surgery.
Whilst Virgin directors and senior managers may be stupid enough to not realise that their bonuses will affect morale amongst their workforce, even though they are bonuses earned when times were good, the resulting announcement of more redundancies is a blow to an already demoralised workforce. The fact that the first stab they took at projecting their losses for this downturn have proven to be so very wrong is only an indictment of their poor judgement.
The announcement yesterday should not come as a huge surprise but from the pilots perspective, it just reflects the short sightedness of some of the decisions being made. The festering problem that is being created is that when the business starts to pick up, the same management will be caught on the wrong foot as expansion requires more pilots than are available, either due to not enough wanting to come back or worse still, not enough trainers to train the backlog. This in turn will have a disrespected management trying to get demoralised pilots to work outside of their terms and conditions which will create friction.
The easy answer? There isn't one and I'm not paid enough to make those decisions. Amongst the pilot workforce there is the belief that rather than laying off so many pilots they should be looking at offering unpaid leave and/or less hours a year. The overheads will still be there but the upside is that when the recovery kicks in there will be enough trained bodies in place to keep the show running smoothly.
As a pilot, I and my colleagues have to keep all options open. We would like to preserve the jobs of those near the end of the seniority list, even if it means some sacrifice. Our senior management and above don't seem to grasp the concept of keeping morale as it is not a tangible asset.
PR is one thing but celebrating and partying just before announcing yet more redundancies because they got the numbers wrong in the first place is tantamount to irresponsibility.
The armchair experts should bugger off to their respective forums on here and leave us pilots to discuss our T's & C's. They can read our comments but please refrain from posting your simplistic and ignorance based views here. Just because have flown with us once or twice or your mate is a frequent flyer with Virgin doesn't confer on you the right turn this post into a spotters free for all.
Mods, can we please make sure that this isn't turned into another of those interminably boring posts that the armchair enthusiasts have a habit of ruining?
