Not a pilot but...
I am a marketing and branding professional.
A "Brand" is put simply "a promise". In this instance the brand is Monarch and the promise on their website is: "Customer care and service lie at the heart of the Group’s business approach". Nowhere does it say "fancy new aircraft guaranteed". If you put monarch into Google, the first 2 words the company are paying for after their name are "cheap flights". So unless you are a little hard of thinking, you can work out it's going to be a budget flight with trimmings. I cannot see how the customers got anything but the brand promise right up until the plane went "Rallying" (sic). Sure it's a
PR own goal to use older planes when the "general public" are used to new and cheap elsewhere - but that is their business decision and they will have to live with the
PR consequences. It is however, just
PR. It has nothing to do with operations as long as they are using subbies working within current EU legislation.
Ironically if you want fancy new aircraft you should have gone down the road to Luton and gone low cost Easyjet. However,I seem to remember this can happen to the Pikeys brand new planes too?
While this is all fascinating stuff I fail to see how it relevant to the thread unless there is some far deeper issue such as flying an aircraft with tech issues that should have kept it on the ground.
As usual - it's a few months early to publish the report but all very good fun (since everyone walked away, which I believe is still a good landing...)