Sorry to hear about the job cuts; I don't doubt that there's going to be more of the same at mainline & regional. Speaking as one of the 'cronies' at mainline, I would suggest that any profit/loss figures spouted by the board in the past are merely put out to suit the mood of the day - sure, the group may have made "x" profit/loss in such a year, but I'm pretty sure that money has been shifted around to influence policy, salary claims, etc. It's for that reason that I think that the posts by worldaccording2 & 16024 are being a bit simplistic. When baby was set up (in a matter of weeks) back then my roster was changed almost overnight to fly the baby sectors instead of mainline ones. Ops & crewing was being run from the hall; engineering assistance was on hand from Midland;- I bet that wasn't going through baby's books. I'm not trying to turn this into a rant about which arm of the business is more worthy than the other, I just think that any talk of profit/loss that comes from the company should be treated with a large pinch of salt, at least until things have bedded down and we all have a board in charge that are interested in more than lining their own pockets. I for one am regularly flying full aircraft to midhaul destinations, a number of which are to oil rich countries where there is little or no competition. If they can't generate revenue from that then the marketing should be handed over completely to LH. I tend to agree with the sentiments of bmibaby.com's post yesterday with regard to the level of commitment that must have been apparent to the Lufty guys that have been overseeing things recently, and also to the inaction that seems to have gripped SMB and his merry band. For years the competition has been placing large orders for new, fuel efficient aircraft, while baby end up with the legacy fleet from mainline plus a few clapped out -300s from the far east. Can it be a surprise that they may not be as efficient or reliable as the competition's? - Not really, I think we all realise now that probably not a single operation that occurred within any part of any of the group's activities didn't happen without a 'cut' being filtered away to boost a bank account somewhere. I wonder how much of the much-touted £100m "loss" was because of that?
There was much talk of LH simply flogging off parts of the business; I think that it is at least a positive sign that they haven't done so. I think that the next couple of years will (I hope) show them that it will have been the correct choice.