SECs is right. The main reason BACX can't make a profit is that the incidental costs have got totally out of control. The odd taxi and hotel here and there won't make much difference but we are not talking about the odd taxi and hotel ! We are talking about entire taxi companies being created and run solely for us ! and hotels full of displaced pilots and cabin crew.
The main problem was that although the FSAS changes may have been designed to cut costs in the short term they have created so much havoc that the short term costs of implementing them have driven us so far into the red you have to wonder whether it was worth it !
Manhatten Transfers have started up a BRS base purely to cater for us. At one point early this year they were running 10 to 15 round trips between BRS and CWL everyday ! Each with just one person in ! I have and I know others who have been displaced, who have been rostered away and then left in hotels, at goodness only knows how much a night, on STANDBY then to be brought home in a taxi having not operated a single sector ! I have friends working for TITAN who are laughing at us as they take ten thousand pounds a sector because we didn't have enough a/c and Cabin Crew - although all the a/c we "sent back" (to save a couple of quid) were standing idle usually at our own bases !
The whole scale changes brought about must have sent the training costs through the stratosphere and we have not even got to all the relocation !
The whole thing is a typical accountant's solution. Find a way to save £1 but forget that saving that £1 is going to cost you £10. You only need to look at almost every area of management in the UK, not just airlines, to see how useless accountants and management consultants are ! The people who know how to cut costs and where they can be cut effectively are the people who spend the money - The Pilots, Cabin Crew, The Ground Staff and the Engineers ! But no one asks us and despite what is said everytime I've suggested something the only reply you can get is that "You can't see the big picture". Well I can see the "Small Picture" and anyone who forgets the "look after the pennies....." quotation is obviously an accountant. Smart tricks on a balance sheet don't put bums on seats or save a few quid on fuel, catering and crewing. This is the fundamental thing that has been forgotten.
There was a need for change. The industry is changing beyond all recognition and no one in BA knows what to do about it because only good BA people get the important jobs and they know no other way. I personally don't blame any of the BACX line management they have been given an impossible task and the wrong equipment to do it with. i.e. The RJ, mike is right they are a tech nightmare and won't help us keep our pax's bums off FLY BEs, MYlites, BMi's, et als, seats ! But as a company, be it management or those of us at the sharp end, we are lumbered with them by people higher up BA who don't care if we succeed or fail and will keep their jobs and careers either way.
The point, after my long ramble, I am trying to make is that - Yes change is necessary BUT the company must think about the costs involved in making the changes BEFORE implementing them. That's where the FSAS reviews failed. They made logical, if not always nice, changes BUT carried them out with absolutley no co-ordination, planning or cost control. To quote Nike they just did it and the companies operation fell apart as a result and I'm worried it may now never recover.
For the company to survive the overheads have to be slashed you can not turn profit into loss by cutting more and more of an operation. That just leaves you with less earning potential to cover the same massive massive masssive overheads we have. This won't change as the turkeys will never vote for Christmas ! and most of the turkeys still think it's 1968 and this is how an airline must be run !
Last edited by CheekyVisual; 28th Apr 2003 at 16:55.