easy Lowcost Mismanagement on a grand scale

[A Tree]

Lowcost Mismanagement on a grand scale

Ex non-exec director Colin Day has learned a valuable lesson in how the web.s favorite airline works or rather how it doesn,t. Mismanagement on a grand scale is sadly nothing new to those of us who have been working here for some time now. He should think himself lucky from being given the big clue before he actually committed himself to te role of CEO, relacing our old friend and colleague Ray. Yes good old Ray how we will miss him. The man who was roundly booed by the assembled audience at Stelios,s leaving party at the RAF Museum in N. London a couple of years back when Sir Colin Chandler joined the gang. The man who thinks that staff travel is a waste of money and has done as little as possible to allow it happen in EZY.

But when considering this bungling by the board, let us not forget that there has been horrible waste and mismanagement at lower levels of the busness too sadly. Let,s cast our minds back to the Carmen Rostering Fiasco, was it realy only 3 years ago when the clowns in easyLnd deided to launch their secret weaon upon an unsuspectng workforce. Within one week all was chaos and a summer of madness comenced, the like of which we had seen before unfortunately.

And before that we had the issue of the useless Head Up Display units fitted to all the B737-300 33V models. Brilliant! Only $245,000 a pop and never ever used, complete waste of money. But then the ordering of the -700 fleet left a lot to be desired shortly afterwards when they were ordered at an insufficient Zero Fuel Weight and several $million later was paid to Seattle for the privilege of the paperwork so that they could actually carry passengers.

Hey and what do we see now with the A319 delivery? 156 seats and all f a sudden the airlie middle mismanagers are surprised when they hear that the law states that 4 CC must be carried on very flight. Did nobody in easyLand think to ask one the pilots who work there (who had done an aviation law exam) what the law says about cabin crew complement versus nuber of sets (not # of Pax onboard) ? So now the airline carries a crewing liability that was never planned for al due to bungling incompetence as usual.

And more recently still we have had another joke "Come On Lets Fly"whch all the peeps n wasteLand think is great and which has absolutely nil effet with us crews on the line. In LTN they are all realy excited about it, but its just a marketing slogan and not a very good one at that. The TV ads were a complete waste as they were unfocussed and didnt get over the brand in a strong enough way. The message to the customers was not there and unless you were an expert on airline uniforms you would have been hard pushed to know which airline it was.

Meanwhie our Terms & Conditions as employees are being steadily eroded while we work harder than ever before. Very soon we shall see us paying for our own recurrent sims, SEP courses, that joke of a CRM day with the little man with the inversely proportional ego (who by the way believes that ALL 60+ pilots are incompetent duffers) whereas he as a medico can carry on working till he,s 80!

Tony Illsley made a good move to leave when he did. He,s seen the writing on the wall and now Colin Day hs voted with his feet. The rel tragedy is that the whole rganisation is riddled with a sickness for which there is no cure and no amount of straplines and clever marketing strtegies will save it. Ryanair is ging to eat us alive and tht,s all there is to it.

Believe me when I say the end is nigh!

[rubik101]

Hey, Tree, you should read your missive before you post it to check for all those simple spelling errors.
Those totally useless and expensive HUDs are a complete waste of money and if I hit my head on one again soon I will remove it myself, with the crash axe!
I have also wondered quite what the 'Come on Let's Fly' is all about. Anyone else know?

[flying scotsman]

I would tend to disagree with the doom and gloom assessement of A tree. although it does reflect the view of many of the guys I meet on the line from various bases.

the business model is good (IMHO) but the delivery, presentation, public perception, and the obvious effects of low crew morale let it down.

generally people get what they want out of it. most folks I know in easy are there because it offers 'one' particular thing they need be it hours, a quick-ish jet command or home base. It's certainly not BA or southwest, nobody is there for love.

but if the managers continue to screw the nut to try and save every penny then they are simply doing their job. it is unrealsitic to expect airline leading packages for crew from an airline dedicated to the lowest common denominator when it cones to cost.

like it or not we are like ships captains and train drivers in times gone by, at one stage everybody wanted to be one of those because it was the cutting edge, new technology and exciting. now air transport is generic, common and a means to an end. it's far sexier to run your own programming agency.

like doctors nurses and dentists we are a vocational career. some will make the big bucks but most will plod along comfortably. it is silly to blame this on easyjet or any other Lo-Co. when you're package drops to a level you feel does not warrant your continued participation then leave. But having had some involvement in these things before I'm actually quite impressed with the way easy is run.............some obvious shockers when it comes to mistakes but some pretty good points too.


now running for cover.............

[veryEZYboy]

what is "come on, let's fly" about

"come on, let's fly" is the biggest bunch of bulls*@t around and yet another excuse to waste money. The big brains in easyland probably thought about the TV series "Airline" and the opening theme tune "come fly with me, let's fly, let's fly away" but obviously you can't put that on the side of a plane.
Then they try and come up with a meaning for the phrase. "come on, let's fly is about delivering a consistent experience to our customers blah blah blah" "Over 100 come on, let's fly ambassadors will be spreading the word internally blah blah blah" BULLS*@T, I have not had one "ambassador" tell me anything about consistent experience since they came up with that piece of crap. All I ever hear is how much everyone wants to leave, how they are being worked to the bone every month with ridiculously long sector combinations.

This company has changed so much and doesn't know how the get itself out of the vicious circles that it finds itself in. For example so many people are leaving because from day one they are worked liked dogs, but the company has to work us like dogs because so many people are leaving. Catch 22 me thinks!

Rant over.

[MarkD]

Didn't the Easy 319s come with 320 c/sections to allow 156 instead of 149?

[Mr Ree]

No, just 20 inch seat pitch!

[jumpseater]

And in the past year the share price has dropped from about £1.20 to £2.70, an absolutely appaling performance! Those investors must be shaking in their boots! A pity Mr Tree is unable to tell us how the 'end' will come! The rest of his post was so informative with loads of new information for us to digest!

[Muzza]

HUD would have been a bloody useful bit of kit....circling Krakow 07 / Ciampino 33 ..great pity that the Committee Against Aviation would not allow its certification in the UK. Not the fault of the individual / s who suggested and ordered it. Just a backward looking regulator who can't see the extension of technology, and its successs in other parts of the world. Are we so different ?..

How did she get, and keep that job?.

[FlyingOrange]

I think what A Tree is trying to do is put across the fustration that it felt at the coal face by the crew on a daily basis.

Our so called managers in the Orange Office at LTN seem to have little idea of life at the bases, the decisions they are making are ... clueless!!

A Tree does have some valid points;

COLF ..... biggest waste of 3million I've ever seen. LTN office folk running about producing lots of crap, telling us how we should be doing things ... but were all ready are, and have been all along.

The 156 seat 319 .... mmm 1 extra crew for 6 pax, how often do we fly that full ... how much for the extra crew? Now I see that it looks like were going down to 150 ... but instead of moving the seats and make a marketing ploy of the legroom we just take the cushions of 2 rows!!

T&C's .... well Staff Travel for one.

The 5254 fiasco, all brought in with misguided truths ..... now crews knackered. After 5 earlies I'm a Zombie, 5 Lates I'm a Zombie ... on my 2 days rest I'm a Zombie .... it was described to me the other day as 12 on 4 off, an apt view. Then every month we have to read those rostering letter's, how does he write so much crap .... the guys at KLM UK were right about him. Do they know the amount of reports going direct to the CAA and CHIRP's ... because most of us don't trust our own managers to deal with it. Even last week at LGW our Base Capt told us how wonderful 5254 was in an e-mail even because crews were complaining it to him ... does he listen?

But I do think that if we get the right managers we can go forward .... As RW leaves can he take his young, fan club from LTN and get some folk in with brains rather than stupid smiles and 'Yes, Ray' attitudes.

We are not low cost, Ryanair is, but we do have a great brand name that is known. So lets take this airline forward.

Realise ... crews are important and need to be retained ... its no longer a small airline, where crews can be 'burnt out and replaced' RW comment.
Get some real managers. Start at LTN, most depts ... work down to bases ... the office in LGW will be empty!!

[Maude Charlee]

Ryanair is never going to eat anyone alive - stop kidding yourself. MOL is aviation's Gerald Ratner and his big gob is a ticking timebomb to financial meltdown.

tick, tock..........tick, tock............

If you think his grass is greener, then it's only because it's knee deep in bullsh1t.

[FlapsOne]

If you hate it so much, why don't you leave?

.......just a thought!

[veryEZYboy]

You should see the amount of people that are leaving. It's ridiculous. easyJet needs to do more to hold on to it's employees.

[Orange In Cider]

Whilst I'm not quite so doom and gloom as A Tree, he has some very valid points.

The Carmen fiasco 3 years ago was exactly that....a fiasco. I am well aware of a number of people close to me who tried to sound the alarm before it was introduced, but were not listened to. They listened to the marketing hype without considering some of the key operational elements. Looked great on paper though ;-)

Come On Let's Fly....what a complete load of Cr@p. Was involved in elements of this from the start, and embarrassed to admit that. Was a half-baked idea, and the wrong people in charge. The team that was formed to roll it out had difficulty understanding what it was supposed to mean, or to get excited about it, so how the hell were they meant to convince the rest of the company? Only saw the TV ad twice then it disappeared...complete waste!

Staff morale....definitely not the place it used to be. I agree with the "if you don't like it, then leave" comments. A lot of very good people have done exactly that! Those that haven't left can only work at this pace, while feeling for unappreciated, for a finite period.

Great business model, albeit with a few deviations here and there.

Will Ryanair swallow easyJet up? No, don't think so, and personally I believe the eJ business model to be the stronger in the long term. I guess it depends on which one is more bent on self-destruction.

[Mr Ree]

During the carmen debacle I met Ray in the orangery thingy cafe, and we got talking about life on the line. He genuinely looked absolutely gobsmacked when I told him what was really going on. I got the distinct impression that he was being fed a totally different story by his deputees. And that still appears to be the case today.
There seems to be so much mis-truths told to keep the lie going. I have to agree that these rostering letters we get are just beyond belief. No one likes being knackered all the time so don't bother telling us how much we like the 5254. WE DON'T! And if another crewing officer tells me that yet another change "is OK 'cos it's legal" despite the fact that I'll be a zombie at work I....aaaargh.
And yet it's the same story.."Ah, yes, but we don't act on hearsay, no one has complained officially about 5254 so it is much better than before."
It's a mad house and the lunatics are running the show.
But, I've conditioned myself that it's all normal and that I love it!

[Orange In Cider]

Mr Ree,

You are right. You only have to look at who the operational directors were at the time, and Ray would never have got the full story...just the BS!

However, the reason for that is his management style. I've been there, and you tell him what he wants to hear!

[Meeb]

HUD would have been a bloody useful bit of kit....circling Krakow 07 / Ciampino 33 ..great pity that the Committee Against Aviation would not allow its certification in the UK. Not the fault of the individual / s who suggested and ordered it.

Would it not have been an idea to check first with the regulator as to its likely acceptance? Seems like inept management to me, but then again, show me good airline management, in any company, and I'll arrange a meeting with Elvis for you...

[Doors to Automatic]

Cheer up! You could be at BMI or worse still, BMI baby where the management hasn't a clue what it's doing or where it should be flying next! Instead doing everything in its power to turn what it has into a complete dog's dinner!

[PAXboy]

Non-airline person talking. What you describe is exactly the same process that 99% of commercial companies are going through. No one is spared because the driving forces are the same. It is no comfort but you are not alone. The difference, of course, is that lives are at stake but nothing much changes in this world until people die. One can but try and ensure that it is not you.

Secondly, I would give EZY the edge of RYR because Ryan is based on a single man, whereas easy is a company. The same problem faces News International when Murdoch dies - can anyone run it as well as him? I suggest not. Stelios (like Branson) understands that their strength is to start something and then let others run it.

[jabird]

Paxboy,

I would suggest taking a look at FRs other senior executives, and you will find quite a few MOL "actalikes" amongst them!

MOL has created the Ryanair today, but the airline is still Ryanair, not MOLair, or as some might say in French, MOlair'est.

Maude, Ratner has made perhaps the single most famous quote in business history, but he has also since bounced back to run a multimillion dollar turnover online jewellers (which is also profitable iirc).

MOL makes "gaffes" pretty much every day, but if they are really that bad, the board or shareholders would have kicked him off long ago.

Find me a company with more than one employee which doesn't have its own internal politics. In fact, looking at some of the characters who have set up airlines in the past, who needs employees for internal conflict?

[LTNman]

Ten years ago easyjet was launched with just 2 aircraft flying internal routes. Ten years later they now have around 114 aircraft flying all over Europe. Seems to me that management must be doing something right.

In every organisation there are going to be those people who are born moaners yet are too frightened to leave because they know how well they are doing but don’t like to admit it.