Originally Posted by
Right Engine
Watching the vultures on the carcass here, I'd like to add : we're good. Find us a new CEO and we are better. But your armchair hypotheses are to be honest, a load of b......
Seconded. The IAG group just made £1.5 Billion in profit of which the vast majority (as usual) was down to the airline that some are saying here is in dire straits. IAG would be monumentally stupid to significantly mutilate their cash cow. Things definitely need to change as regard cost cutting above all else but I would hope some form of salutary lesson has been learned in the last week or so. Alex Cruz has been left in absolutely no doubt as to the depth of feeling on the shop floor recently on Yammer (which he so likes to use) with some people directly calling for his resignation. There is one particular post from a 777 Captain - that I wholeheartedly agreed with - which was scathing in the extreme. He (Cruz) may not have responded to it but he can't fail to have taken notice. This is hopefully the moment of the Company's nadir. It simply has to be.
As regards to the future, well we're talking momentary blips here in terms of pilot numbers. The overall trend is for people needed, regardless of a big compensation bill in the short term. For starters there's an 18 month waitlist for Right to Request Part Time, plus a potentially big take up of the new Aspirational options. Further on 2019/2020 sees a "big" bulge of retirements (in whichever context you take big to mean I don't know but this came from the pilot training manager). More new Long Haul aircraft arriving from next year as more Short Haul slots continually get converted to Long Haul. It will be moving in the right direction again. This year was always going to be comparatively slow, I don't know how many more times that needs to be emphasised. Perhaps not as slow as it has turned out to be once Cruz renegotiated the A350 deliveries (as stated above) and chopped the SH flying programme but 2017 was never the big recruitment year.
The future need in the light of recent events perhaps may not be as full on as 2015/2016 but there's still people needed, make no mistake. Although the accountants and management may not like it, you still need pilots to run an airline (for now).