They might have engineers in these places as my lot do in others but they won't have the spares.
As for the decision to turn back, I would expect that would have been made by MON Ops.

What on earth do these numpties know about the workings of aircraft and airlines? The bottom line in their eyes is that they lost 24 hours of their holiday but will probably be compensated anyway. As Arthur Askey (who?) used to say ´doesn´t it make you want to spit´. Oh the great British public!

Yes, the captain probably hated doing it but could only veto ops decision if there was a safety issue, which obviously, there wasn't.

People are looking at this decision in terms of how it affected those on their way to Sharm, but what about the inbound passengers? What about those on the following fight? An aircraft tech in Sharm with spares 2500 miles away is not much use to anyone.

Easy jet don't just divert and 'dump' you at another airport and bugger off back home, They intact wait for the return pax to be coached from the airport and take them home from there. I.e Innsbruck when closed, divert to Munich, pax get bussed to inn, and pax get bussed from inn!! They wait for 4 hrs on the ground to take pax home.

So just clarify who has ever been dumped or left stranded by Monarch?? As far as I can tell, Monarch has always got their passengers to/from their destination in one way shape or form when the sh1t has hit the fan!

It is the supportive customer care such as pulling out all the stops when is required that the CAA rely upon when other companies such as XL, Globespan and Flyjet go bust that Monarch are called upon save the day and repatriate people.

The Captain in question would have made an executive decision following consultation from company operations, his fellow crew members and having considered the bigger picture! Individuals are far too quick to criticise and aren't privy to all the information that is available or has to be taken into consideration!
Those few inconvenienced passengers will have been looked after and accommodated, fed and watered where necessary!

Don't you just love it on here, when people don't have a clue and talk out of their :mad:.
If you follow the correct procedures, which in the case of the turn back, the crew did, you will have no problem with the window.
You are in fact in more danger when you get ready for the landing, as you are at a lower altitude and in danger of a bird hitting a cold window.
What cracks 9 times out of 10 is the glass coating and not the inner panel.
ZeBedie, summed it up perfectly in that you may by turning back, delay the outbound and return pax by 6 to 10 hours, or a day if you are unlucky.
If you carry on, you delay the inbound pax a minimum of 24 hours or maybe a lot more.
With the a/c out of service for a number of days down route, you will more than likely delay many more pax over the next few days also.

well put mr spotty. loose time to gain time . classic case. i sure would have no probs with how things were sorted.

Does anybody have any news as to when MON relase their new routes for Winter 2012? Is so please can you indicate which routes are likely. Thanks, DomDom

Another second floor clear out, if we can get rid of the last few Brown-ites we can at last start to move on and put the last ten years down as a bad dream.

Aye ... and bring back TJ ;)

Whats going on egon anything to do with the rumour of easy jet taking over?

From FT.com

Monarch Airlines has appointed a new finance director in a management reshuffle that will also give chairman Iain Rawlinson permanent chief executive responsibilities.

The privately held charter carrier and scheduled operator is in the middle of a two-year turnround plan to return it to profit next year.

High fuel prices, a difficult consumer environment and competition from airlines such as Ryanair and EasyJet contributed to an operating loss of £45m in the year to October 2011.

In November, the company’s owners injected £75m to shore up finances and allow Monarch to launch 14 routes and to add narrow-body jets to a 28-aircraft fleet.

It also unveiled plans under which the group would aim to offer shorter flights to increase revenues per seat mile – a task that has been helped by its bigger rivals raising their own fares – and to reduce costs.

“We are starting to see the benefits of our work coming through in results,” Mr Rawlinson said on Thursday.

He added that the group was “keen to maintain consistency and stability in the top team” but wanted the “experience, strength and clarity” of Robert Palmer as finance director.

Mr Palmer, a veteran of EasyJet, BMI and Air Malta, has been a consultant to Monarch for seven months and takes over from Simon Tucker, who is leaving.

The chief operating officer, Richard Mintern, is also leaving. His main responsibilities of overseeing the group’s three divisions – the airline, package tours and aircraft engineering – will be handed to an expanded finance team.

Douglas McNeill, an airline analyst with Charles Stanley, said that “as a relatively small, leisure-focused airline facing high passenger taxes, high fuel costs and bigger, ever more efficient rivals, [Monarch is] probably finding life quite tough at present.”

However, he said the group’s shareholders, dominated by the Swiss-Italian Mantegazza family, appeared ready to fund it through difficult times.

A decade ago, Monarch shifted its focus from chartered flights to being a scheduled airline. Now Mr Rawlinson wants passengers to regard the brand as a step above its low-cost rivals but as a cheaper alternative to full-service carriers.

“I’m not sure there’s a niche there,” countered Mr McNeill. “The difference [between budget and full-service airlines] is obvious for business travellers, but it’s a lot less distinct in the leisure market.”

Other small European carriers are struggling to cope with high fuel prices. Two – Hungary’s Malév and Catalonia-based Spanair – have collapsed this year.

The mid way between low cost and full service isn't going to be an easy journey for Monarch. They offer little more than Easyjet who themselves are much stronger and heading the same general direction.

Do they really offer that much more than easyJet? Tangible benefits that you'd pay the extra money for?

So that's another half of the management team thrown out of the hot air balloon basket to try to remain airborne and delay the actions of the force of gravity. One thing is for sure, it's a good job that Monarch isn't a publicly quoted company otherwise the share price would be through the floor with the frequent changes of management and structure.

And some of the comments above are quite extraordinary. The gem is this one:

Have they not worked out that the revenue per seat mile might be better on shorter flights, but the cost per seat-mile is also a lot higher as you still have the same level of airport landing and handling fees which make up a chunky proportion of the operating costs?

If they haven't even understood that concept, and the whole recovery plan is based on an economic model rather than a real understanding of market conditions, then they're in even deeper trouble than I thought. Anyway, time to start the music again for the next round of musical chairs in the board room.

Do you think they mean shorter flight sectors, so more rotations per day, thus better utilisation?

Wow............so many experts here on managing an airline, so much advice is available to the directors.........I hope Mr Rawlinson and co read these forums, there is so much they could learn from all these posts......:rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:

Now. I'm off to a couple of football forums to advise Sir Alex how he should organise his team to beat Aston Villa later today.........I'm sure he'll be very appreciative :hmm::hmm::hmm:

:D:D

Don't think I'd be telling them how to manage their train set!

T2 - you've made that point on here a few times. You might be surprised to know that some people on here do know their stuff and are entitled to an opinion ( as are you of course ) blindly accepting that the CEO knows best has fundamentally not worked in the last ten years. Peter Brown was a disaster for Monarch as were some of his appointments and hapless decisions and missed opportunities. Look no further than the emergence of Jet2 during his tenure as just one example. The current management is just a floundering continuation of his tenure. IR may be a thoroughly nice chap but can he run an airline. It's a little different to running a bank.

If you (god forbid) made a fundamental error at work in your 757 one day, you would expect it to be debated here and elsewhere, and your decisions challenged. Management are no different. If you take the big jobs, you need to live with the big expectation.

Perhaps they should put whoevers running the engineering side in charge, By all accounts its quite profitable

Egon;

I would suggest that the current management has little to do with PB, hence this debate!
Lets hope that IR is the man to sort out the mess.

BHX to PFO 22 apr
 

First Monarch flight next sunday, on A321 according to seat plan.I have read somewhere about leather seats, would this be ex GBairways/ EZY examples?
Also if they are is the IFE used? Thanks In Advance.

Blighty Pilot and Manthrust................I agree!!

Egon,

Are you suggesting if I had an incident, people would come on here with little or no experience, qualifications or knowledge of the subject matter and tell us all how I should have acted?!

Oh yes, I forgot................that was exactly the point I was making earlier..............I am the first to be keen to listen to opinions about any subject, but only from individuals with first hand experience of that particular role.......too many armchair experts in this world for me:ugh:

T2. The art of pprune is to separate the few strands of wheat from the considerable chaff. That's all.
Let's all hope the new regime really can turn things around. Too many mortgages and pensions depend on it.

Two of the a321's used to ahve them when they were based at MAN because they only had 207 seats. They now have 214 like the rest of the A321's and the seats are no longer leather.

Shame really I liked the leather ones you used to be able to turn the headrest :)

If you are going for only a week you might get IFE both ways, but no IFE after 1st May. :{

You are stopping IFE? I remember when we used to get it on MAN-AGP flights back in 2008 or somewhere near then

MKY661
 

Yes & No.
My understanding is, no IFE on the narrow body fleets after May 1st. :{

Who is making the decisions at Monarch? That seems like a very strange step in the wrong direction.

Aprox $25000 for the rights to play a movie. X Kgs of electrical equipment to be carried around which leads to extra fuel burn (fuel is v v expensive!). The vast majority of pax have their own source of in flight entertainment these days (iPad etc) and I can therefore understand why the IFE has been offloaded to save costs rather than cater for the minority!

Surely if you want to differentiate yourselves from easyJet and Ryanair (who are both big competitors on many Monarch short haul routes) and offer a superior product, at a higher price, surely IFE is imperative?

Not just MON doing this. I believe TOM dropped IFE for flights under 7 hours (all narrowbody fleets). They also dropped pax meals in favour of on board fast food on same flights.

IFE on short haul, unless PTV AVOD, is not viable anymore. The only other option for Monarch is to offer what EZY are trialling on longer distance routes out of MAN and LGW. They are trialling handheld devices similar to the LS ones at MAN and some sort of tablet out of LGW.

Otherwise, it's just not worth it.

My mistake I was told today that the two new A320's have them

Dannyboy39
 

One problem is that not all of the Airbus A320/321 have IFE fitted, so IFE can not be imperative.

Taking IFE off the shorter routes looks like the only sane decision on here for the last few pages. It's a no brainer to remove it given the amounts you have to pay for the movie rights and various different licences to screen programming and play music.

But I still doubt this will suffice to offset some of the other madness.

And New T2 Office, I know nothing about football and don't comment on it. But I do know a few things about airlines and do feel qualified to comment on those. As Egon Maybach suggests, blindly assuming that your leaders are omniscient can be very dangerous. There should be enough examples from the safety side of the aviation industry to convince you that the Captain isn't always right.

F.Rider........I see if I select 'find more posts' from yourself, you do indeed know a few things about airlines, I note your wisdom is available on the BMI forum, also Monarch, BMIbaby 2, Aer Lingus regional, Bournemouth airport, BA pilots pondering the BMI proposal, Alderney airport, Exeter/Norwich routes, Flybe, Thomas Cook, Fastjet, BA, Easyjet, Leeds airport, Belfast airport to name just a few!!!

I assume you must work in a consultancy capacity for these organisations........If not, you should, as it sounds like you could earn a handsome salary by helping these outfits in their hour of financial need :rolleyes:

T2, are you one of those people who complains about all the rubbish on telly, but will never turn it off.

Monarch Airbus number 10
 

Recently a A320/321 passed low overhead and i read a large number 10 on the bottom of the fuselage between the main undercarriage
I was wondering what it related to....... if anyone can help i would be grateful
thanks
Simon