Problems at Brindabella?

[mooncheese]

I'll throw my 2 cents in and you can do with as you wish.....

Why did the company go under?

A combination of a few factors - poor management (both with the oldFrench/Vietnamese and the new Irish/English combos), lack of discipline onstaff (especially crew), throwing money away (e.g. moved the J41 from BNEto SYD and left 4 cabin crew and about 6 J41 pilots in Brissie on RDOs for about 3months on FULL PAY!!!), low load factors, taking on too many routes withnot enough air craft to service them, or crew for that matter.
And thenobviously lax maintenance on the aircraft which led to CASA grounding the fleet.If you’re not flying then you are not making any money. No cash flow broughteverything to a halt.
Brindy had earned themselves a bad rep with the regionalcommunities for cancelling flights willy-nilly, poor customer service and lackof communication from inexperienced customer service team, under staffedoperations team.



Who was making the decisions?

CEO and CCO. They told everyone exactly what they wanted to hear. Manymeetings behind closed doors. Everyone knew something was up but if you asked,then it was always "so many great things to come - things are going tochange" and it never did. The QF code share was a great opportunity, andmany thought it would make things better. But even that was a total balls upfrom the start. They didn't have the system access QF wanted them to have. Nocommunication in the event of U/S AC.

It’s no wonder they went into receivership when they paid for the CEO tocome from Ireland and FIFO every 3 weeks to go home and see his wife and kids!




What was the strategy?

To expand the business. The problem was that there wasn't enough aircraft orcrew to support the new routes they were awarded - MRZ and OAG, plus OOMseasonally.

MRZ is a great route with very good pax numbers. The problem is that it wasawarded on the provision that it was a J41 that operated the flight and it was3 flights a day. The midday flight was often cancelled so the aircraft could beutilised elsewhere, and the plane was downgraded to a metro or J32 if the J41was US, which was often. The community never wanted Brindy, but they flew themin the beginning. But Brindy being Brindy ballsed it up and then the paxnumbers began to drop.


They should have never even started the SYD-OAG route. I still believe thiswas a direct retaliation for Rex coming on to SYD-NTL. Decisions based on emotions rather than business.
Passenger numbers were poor from day 1. OAG flights were always the first toget cancelled. The community grew to be aware of this so didn't even botherbooking FQ - always went with Rex.


The idea behind making the company bigger may have been great. But theexecution of the entire thing was crap. Staff didn't know what to tellcustomers as management hadn't told them anything. They tried to be too big too quickly and it was the death of them


How in God’s name does one pick up two viable (albeit small) aviationcompanies and within 12 months it turns to crud?!

I ask myself the same question.....




Why did the CEO bugger off to the UK?
Was it to raise more funds or had the decision been made to close the doorswell before Saturday and he had quit?
I've got my thoughts but it would interesting to see others views who've run abusiness!

Apparently this was for a meeting with the board of directors and investorsto explain exactly what had happened. They flew him over for a face toface meeting. I think he left on the Friday. The announcement was made on the Sundayand he was back in Australia on the following Tuesday. I think he is stillhere?


And on another note Horatio is correct - the pilots never paid the loan. it was taken out in their name but the company made the repayments, the only reason they would have had to make a payment was if they left the company within their bonded service (2 years) which many had done in the past to move onto bigger and better things. Its a natural attrition - the young guns never intend to stay at small regional airlines for long. they want to be at QF with the big boys.
Apparently there was meant to be insurance in place in case the company went belly up? either way, you guys are being a tad harsh on the blokes that have just lost their jobs and have a 30k debt in their name and nothing to show for it. they shouldn't have to pay it - its a loan for training they now wont receive!!!