Carriers in trouble and flight safety...
Regarding the ACARS paper...yeah, its worth a buck, but probably costs $20. But I take the point that they want the engineers to perform that daunting feat of dexterity.
The entire LCC business model seems to be softening in most countries. There are exceptions of course, but Tiger is not one of them, anywhere. The supply of gullible punters is finite, and its limits have been reached. Marginal revenue is drying up: anecdotal evidence suggests that people are packing there own jumpers and muffins.
Since LCCs compete directly on cost only, the market is by definition price sensitive. There are too many cheap seats in the market place right now, as amply vouched in many articles and recent speeches by the other players. I witnessed this first hand in the UK back in the day when the charter carriers eventually got down to a 50p per seat profit. One bird strike offset the profits from 2 million seats...an absurd situation that could only ever end in tears. Which it did.
Getting back to this obsession with micro-managing costs. At its least logical many enterprises end while a $1000/day man is busy chasing $5 savings initiatives. Who am I kidding? Usually its three or four of them on twice that money.
Flight safety cannot be delivered by a carrier who is kiting cheques to keep the doors open. It cannot be delivered, ultimately, by people unable to recognise their own shortcomings. A big ego might be good sometimes, but not near an airport.
The foregoing ignores the much greater problem at the regulator, which deserves as much scrutiny and collective indignation as we can muster. This country and this industry both deserve much much better than being the playthings of apparent phsycopaths and their eager sycophants.
Last edited by Australopithecus; 7th Aug 2014 at 12:59.
Reason: *sycophants...still trying to decide between that and "lickspittle flunkies"