Kittywake
The assessment of the Mainline operation as a 'basket case' is a bit wide of the mark. The frankly astonishing losses posted by DLH lead me to believe that the beancounters are up to something. Given that the operation (the sharp end) has been undergoing the restructuring programme for the last 18 mths or so in order to SAVE costs, I find it difficult to beleive that the operating losses have practically doubled in that time. I understand DLH screwed up the fuel hedging, costing us £millions before we even started. The other stuff- Arab Spring, ash, snow, etc. are well understood. As far as the costs of crewing the aircraft go, the pilots are the cheapest Airbus pilots in the UK, & probably across a reasonable swathe of the EU as well. As for the Cabin Crew, they are slightly better off in the early years when compared with other airlines, but not by much. The airline still 'enjoys' a sizeable squadron of 'managers' floating about the place, even after the cull; this neeeds addressing. The product that is offered to the punters is confusing & lacks consistency. How can you promise a particular level of service when you put a midhaul 320 on a domestic flight one minute, & an EMB the next? And I'm sorry, the 145 may have a bit more legroom (than a Y144 A319), but give them the choice of that & an Airbus & you know the answer. Now an E195 would be a different case altogether!
-And while we're talking about the size of aircraft, the GLA route has been closed a while now; meanwhile the competition, rubbing their hands & contrary to the typical bmi yield management theorems has put a larger aircraft (767 I believe) on some rotations. We've had countless lectures from our lot that the best way to operate a route is to have a high concentration of high-yield pax on board, even if it means pi$$ing them off by shoehorning them into an unsuitable aircraft. Who's right?
Mainline has the only real crown jewels within the group; the slots. Everything else is either leased, or can be replicated by a determined competition. The trouble is the last owners have been content to babysit those slots, and sit on their perceived value rather than make proper use of them. Our new owners won't invest in the right equipment to make best use of those assets; we have widebody aircraft on our AOC already- if only half of those slots were used properly we would have a longhaul operation the size of VS with a feeder network to boot.
I'll grant you one thing though Kittywake, our branding/advertising is a basket case full of crap.