TAP CEO C O-W is sacked

[jamestkirk]

This just broken.

I am sure a few ex Flybe etc will have some opinions on her performance as CEO

https://skift.com/2023/03/07/tap-air-portugal-ceo-sacked-over-irregular-500000-severance-pay-decision/

[BusterHot]

Karma!

[BA318]

Karma!

The problem is she only seems to fall upwards. Let’s see where she ends up next.

[TartinTon]

Only a matter of time. She always gets found out eventually. It's just amazing that she ever gets taken on in the first place.

[RVF750]

She's as bent as the thruppenny bit that one. No doubt at all.

[V12]

She seems to be the most prolific of incompetent airline CEOs.

[davidjohnson6]

James Hogan did well in Abu Dhabi... or maybe not... depending on your viewpoint

[willy wombat]

I sat next to her at a lunch a few years ago and I have to say I found her deeply unimpressive. How she gets these jobs I really do not know.

[CaptainActor]

She is a promoter of more women in aviation, which i believe is a good philosophy. But she really does not do that cause any favours. Quite the opposite. And where do you start with her decisions at flybe!!!!!!

[Rivet Joint]

She is a promoter of more women in aviation, which i believe is a good philosophy. But she really does not do that cause any favours. Quite the opposite. And where do you start with her decisions at flybe!!!!!!

Pleased to see a thread on this awful woman. You have in fact inadvertently highlighted why this individual keeps getting jobs and will no doubt shortly be announced as a new CEO of another reputable airline. She is a promoter of more women in aviation. This is a cancer affection all businesses where speaking certain rhetoric trumps technical ability and track record. As far as I remember this women actually did nothing for women and arguably ruined the livelihoods of countless women when BE went bust.

[LGS6753]

Another reminder to the woke:
It's what you do, not what you are, that matters.

[ZULUBOY]

Another reminder to the woke:
It's what you do, not what you are, that matters.

As far as I'm aware,none of us tofu-eating wokerati have ever said she was any good or that she should be the CEO of an airline because she was a woman

[ETOPS]

arguably ruined the livelihoods of countless women employees when BE went bust.

I saw this at first hand on the day they folded - so many tears from good people, some of whom haven't fully recovered yet.
Every airline has a "feel" at the worker level and FlyBe was an actual family with many crew quite involved with each other at both the
professional and social level. I know from the public side that the airline made many mistakes (baggage gauge := ) but you can't fake
the level of warmth the crew brought to their job.

[SWBKCB]

I saw this at first hand on the day they folded - so many tears from good people, some of whom haven't fully recovered yet.
Every airline has a "feel" at the worker level and FlyBe was an actual family with many crew quite involved with each other at both the
professional and social level. I know from the public side that the airline made many mistakes (baggage gauge := ) but you can't fake
the level of warmth the crew brought to their job.

Thanks ETOPS - good to hear directly. I do sometimes wonder how many commenting have any direct experience of the woman.

[Less Hair]

Could anybody elaborate on what is the problem with her please (in general)?

[ETOPS]

Her business decisions. She seemed to have a talent for setting out plans, initiatives etc which were clearly going cause problems and costs as opposed to spending time and energy at the coal face fixing stuff.
In no particular order…
Insisting on hand baggage passing through a gauge at the gate and charging £50 for a fail. Many of theses devices appeared to be of slightly different sizes leading to upsets for day return pax.
Designing and painting a new colour scheme on a -8 which was a bland rehash of the purple scheme thus leading to 3 separate schemes in service- at a cost of 10s of thousands.
Failing to control crew costs where obvious wins were a simple instruction away - example;- using expensive taxis to move standby crew between bases but failing to co-ordinate flight and cabin crew requirements thus formations of taxis heading along the motorway with single occupants

I could go on :ugh:

[SWBKCB]

Can see the paint scheme one being driven by the CEO, but if the other two are being pinned on her, there were bigger problems

[ETOPS]

the other two are being pinned on her,

But she was in charge. Over the period of her tenure hundreds of reports were filed and she and her team had crews complaining bitterly about the day to day problems and she did nothing.
A true leader would have taken at least some direct action to address systematic operational failures that were pointed out daily - onboard sales EPOS machines for example - instead she diverted her time to paint schemes, gender specific outreaches etc when the airline was bleeding money at a terminal rate.
I nearly wrote bring back Saad............

[SWBKCB]

Obviously the buck has to stop somewhere, but what has happening between the shop floor and the boardroom? Getting crew from A to B as efficiently as possible is a basic task for the lowest level of line management, surely?

[dixi188]

About 4 years ago flybe had 5 different colour schemes. I saw all 5 in a row at Southampton one day on stands 1 to 5. I should have taked a photo from the office window.
Old blue and white, first purple, new purple back end, dark blue fin (ex Brussels airline) and ex Contilental colours. Quite a corporate identity, not.

[cavokblues]

I could never work out the need for the final change to the non descript purple livery.

Flybe didn't fail because of a lack of brand, I didn't like the full purple to begin with but it gave the airline a clear identity.

[CaptainActor]

I was told on good authority that her tie up with Eastern cost flybe £1m a month in losses.
Dont forget the lighting up of BHX ATC Tower. That'll sell tickets.
I also heard that on board service was losing £9m year.
Oh. Selling tickets for £25 when nearest competitor is £100.

Someone with a GCSE in dog washing could have done a better job

[euromanxdude]

As someone who was made redundant in the early hours of March 5th 2020.. THAT woman has a lot to answer for.

Useful as a chocolate fireguard!

Met her on few occasions.. sorry but she is not leader material.

[TartinTon]

Oh. Selling tickets for £25 when nearest competitor is £100.

Someone with a GCSE in dog washing could have done a better job

To be fair, this type of selling was brought in by Saad when they adopted an Easyjet style of pricing (with a lot of ex-Easy staff). It stopped for a year when they got someone in who knew how to price properly and coincidentally went on to record their one and only year's profit in their history. That stopped when they left and they reverted to "Easy" pricing. You can only price like an easyjet if your aircraft are a certain size or bigger, not when your max capacity is 118 seats and the majority 78....

[cavokblues]

Wasn't that profit under Saad due to flogging the Gatwick slots rather than the pricing?

As useless as COW was I think Flybe was beyond saving. She did absolutely nothing to change that, but nor did anyone in the decade prior.

They were literally unable to control their fleet size, they were way too big for their ops due to the contracts they signed. So they ended up flying aircraft in the hope to try and limit losses when they needed to be parked up and the contracts ripped up.

[TartinTon]

Wasn't that profit under Saad due to flogging the Gatwick slots rather than the pricing?

As useless as COW was I think Flybe was beyond saving. She did absolutely nothing to change that, but nor did anyone in the decade prior.

They were literally unable to control their fleet size, they were way too big for their ops due to the contracts they signed. So they ended up flying aircraft in the hope to try and limit losses when they needed to be parked up and the contracts ripped up.

Nope the LGW slots were still being utilised at that time for a 3 x daily NQY service.

[Flightrider]

Think you each may be talking about two different points in time. Flybe was serving JER, GCI, BHD, IOM, INV, NQY and NCL (I think) back in 2013 and sold all of its Gatwick slots to easyJet for £20m and left Gatwick in March 2014 as a result.

It subsequently picked up some more Gatwick slots after the sale for the Newquay route and PSO.

None of this detracts from the core subject of CO-W’s uselessness though.

Of many, the one that surprised me the most was an episode on a Q400. Flybe had reasonably strict rules about use of personal headphones during the safety demo and critical phases of flight, intended so that you could hear the demo and any commands from the crew. Their prerogative.

CO-W on board one day with her earphones in. Cabin crew placed in the position of wondering what best to do, and correctly decided to ask her to remove the earphones as they would for any other passenger. CO-W just looked at the SCCM, said “no, I won’t be doing that” and put her earphones back in.

Unbelievable, really. How to undermine your own company’s safety policy in one easy step.

[cavokblues]

Yeah, was referring to the slot sale to easyjet in 2013.

[davidjohnson6]

Flightrider - did COW ask for warm nuts à la Korean as well ? :-)

[jamestkirk]

That’s a bit cryptic

[davidjohnson6]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nut_rage_incident
For the avoidance of doubt... the reference in the case of Flybe is very much a dramatic tongue-in-cheek, but the idea is about what capacity airline senior management may have over the ability to override or ignore safety related operational instructions from crew on a particular flight

[jamestkirk]

This was under the radar. Sounds like Flybe.


https://www.portugalresident.com/tap-in-yet-another-oh-so-embarrassing-scandal/


​​​​​​​

[Cloud1]

Her business decisions. She seemed to have a talent for setting out plans, initiatives etc which were clearly going cause problems and costs as opposed to spending time and energy at the coal face fixing stuff.
In no particular order…
Insisting on hand baggage passing through a gauge at the gate and charging £50 for a fail. Many of theses devices appeared to be of slightly different sizes leading to upsets for day return pax.
Designing and painting a new colour scheme on a -8 which was a bland rehash of the purple scheme thus leading to 3 separate schemes in service- at a cost of 10s of thousands.
Failing to control crew costs where obvious wins were a simple instruction away - example;- using expensive taxis to move standby crew between bases but failing to co-ordinate flight and cabin crew requirements thus formations of taxis heading along the motorway with single occupants

I could go on :ugh:

Some of this was already in place at Flybe I’m afraid. The charging of hand baggage happens across many airlines so I think you are clutching at straws trying to pin that on C O-W.

I have to say though I’ve not heard anything positive on this one in the industry. Personally I can’t comment on her decision making - ultimately she sits at the top and the buck stops with her but equally you are relying on the information, data, stats and numbers presented to her being accurate. So it could be less her decision making but her lack of ability to question, unpick, scrutinise and interrogate the information she uses to form her decisions.

Who knows! But what is known is that this will have some short term coverage until she steps in to another airline who haven’t done their homework.

[BusterHot]

Everyone has their ceiling and hopefully she’s reached hers. After having had the misfortune to attend a dinner where she had a golden opportunity to pass on her vision of the future to all the senior trainers, she sat in the corner looking bored and said nothing. She wouldn’t know “Leadership” if it jumped up and punched her on the nose. Personally I wouldn’t employ her to run a public convenience.

[CaptainActor]

TAP cancels order for fleet of new BMWs - Portugal Resident (https://www.portugalresident.com/tap-cancels-order-for-fleet-of-new-bmws/)

She is hilarious.

[JobsaGoodun]

Portuguese airline TAP swings to profit earlier than expected | Reuters (https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/portuguese-airline-tap-swings-profit-earlier-than-expected-2023-03-21/)

Don't get me wrong, I'm no major fan of the lady myself.....but just for balance, there is always another side to the story. It may be more coincidence but perhaps not an entirely unsuccessful tenure.

[Del Prado]

To be fair, this type of selling was brought in by Saad when they adopted an Easyjet style of pricing (with a lot of ex-Easy staff). It stopped for a year when they got someone in who knew how to price properly and coincidentally went on to record their one and only year's profit in their history. That stopped when they left and they reverted to "Easy" pricing. You can only price like an easyjet if your aircraft are a certain size or bigger, not when your max capacity is 118 seats and the majority 78....

According to this they had 3 years of profit, (https://www.statista.com/statistics/1007996/flybe-plc-operating-profit/).
Seems like the massive fall in the £ due to a political event during their last year of profit must have had a significant effect on an airline whose income came mainly in £’s but significant outgoings were in $’s.

[RVF750]

Flybe on board sales. I now work for a company who sells on board drinks and snacks for about half what Flybe were charging… and sell shed loads. Granted it’s longer flights. But pushing a trolley from one end of a Q400 to the other on an hour’s flight to make £2.60 was never going to generate cash flow. Overpriced and poor value.

I agree with other comments, the crew camaraderie was unmatched. I miss my time there but so glad I got out when I did.