Sadly when BBA took over OAT, they chose to remain with a bunch of management who where selected, it appears, more for their lack of management skills and commercial experience than any level of competence and expertise. Having inherited them, BBA seemed to prefer to live with them rather than recruit internally or externally for greater experience and talent. Once, when they seemed to have selected someone who had some skills, they removed him very quickly form his position when he would not be party to their machinations.
They, or at least Signature is, pumping a great deal of money into another money pit called Tyler, where it seems that the rainfall exceeds that of Oxford by a significant margin and all it has to offer it is a cheaper fuel bill. I would have thought it would been more financially expedient to invest in better aircraft than the aging fleet of Arrows and Seneca's who hourly costs and poor utilization must make them more expensive to operate than the revenue recovered through training. If anything was required to be made redundant it was these old beasts, leasing new aircraft couldn't have cost more per hour and even if they did the rise in productivity with a smaller fleet would have had a significant effect on profitability.
I agree with Rolling Circle's comment about the Instructor team at OAT, when will they realize that people are the asset in this business, not land and equipment? Too late for both customer and employees I reckon!
[ 01 December 2001: Message edited by: EL SID ]