Originally Posted by
Sam Ting Wong
GTC's summary is everything but "concise". It's plain wrong and based on assumptions alone. Zero facts, no evidence, nothing.
Alternative facts, anyone?
1) Cathay has "nearly twice as many employees as airlines with similar size"
Singapore Airlines group revenue 15 228 $ Million S$ / total employees 21 534
= 707 160 S$ / employee or
= 3 939 296 HK$ / employee
Japan Airlines group revenue 1 344 000 Million Yen / 31 534 employees
= 42 Million yen / employee
= 2 901 847 HK$ / employee
American airlines group revenue 42,2 Billion US$ / 122 300 employees
= 345 053 US$ / employee
= 2 685 271 HK$ / employee
Cathay Pacific group revenue 92 751 Million HK$ / total employees 26 000
= 3 567 346 HK$ / employee
2) To claim " Cathay never invested in IT " is so ridiculous I won't even bother to argue.
3) The "individual cost factor" is the answer. So in other words, if we would not fly with 50 or 60, but with the correct 57,3456 we would make a huuuuuuuge profit, right? What a joke.
4) buying Jeppeson. Sure. because you like the ILS charts this MUST be a good company. Any airline without their service " will never be competitive in the Asian market". Makes total sense.
( by the way, did you notice that most of your "arguments" are somewhat related to your job, to the pilot's view. And all the problems are somewhere else. You think this is a coincidence?? )
Sam Ting Wong
If you quote me, quote me correct.
I posted "CX has nearly twice as many office employees and way too many managers".
Office employees and managers! Not total employees, not pilots, not cabin crew, not airport staff, not maintenance employees. I was posting about "office employees and managers" Get it???
Your numbers of revenue generated per employee do mean nothing. The bottom line matters and if revenue is less then cost you are losing money.
As for IT technology, it clearly shows you have no idea what you are talking about. Modern airlines have integrated IT systems, no redundant data, all departments interfaced with a free flow of information.
CX has various stand-alone systems, some are interfaced others are not, same data is stored redundant in various systems and might be updated in one system and outdated in another. Many workflows are done manually or with 25 year old MS DOS systems. Data and information of the various CX departments have limited interfaces and information flow between departments is basically non existent.
As for Jeppesen, I barely pointed out there are several vendors who sell complete Airline solutions like Amadeus, Sabre, Jeppesen and so on. I could care less if they buy a Jeppesen solution. However, I was trying to make a point that CX still does not understand the cost savings associated with a proper IT infrastructure.
I am talking about big picture here. Here is an example how an airline with a modern IT system works, from a pilots perspective.
The system is integrated, meaning it knows how many pax are on the flight, how much cargo, how much revenue was generated for this specific flight (ticket sales is part of the system or interfaced). The system is integrated into the maintenance system and knows how much maintenance will cost for this flight. It also knows if the engines and APU are leased or owned for the aircraft used for this flight. The system knows if the aircraft is owned or leased and the capital cost associated. The system knows exactly how much the cockpit and cabin crew will cost for this flight. The system is also integrated in the flight planning system. It will calculate the most cost effective solution for this flight by choosing a particular flight route and selecting the most cost effective cost index.
It might be cheaper to fly faster burn more fuel or because of winds, but save a lot of leasing and maintenance cost if the engines are powered by the hour. Or it might be cheaper to fly slower save fuel if maintenance and capital cost have a lesser factor. The system knows this as it has access to all the data. To put it in simple terms, the system tries to calculate the lowest variable cost for the airline. Administration is a fixed cost and as such factors not into these calculations.
The above is just a small area what integrated systems can do. Average time to process a crew swap request at CX? 4.8 days (processed manually by a human), with a computer solution 4 seconds.
Pattern optimizers are run several times daily at other airlines. CX will have one when CMP comes online, but the other half of this process still missing..
Productivity losses for cockpit cabin crew are huge. On the 747 fleet alone aircraft utilization losses due to aircraft sitting on the ground waiting for crew to be available was past 100 million USD last 12 months.
I could go on and on ....
CX has none of the above. All these tasks are done manually (or not at all) or by separate IT systems which are not or only limited interfaced.
BTW, I am not talking from a pilot perspective. I am talking from the position of someone who helps organizations in restructuring, analyzing and defining data model, work flows, processes and organizational hierarchy, build an appropriate IT infrastructure and as a result reduce fixed cost by several percentage points.