Go Back  PPRuNe Forums > PPRuNe Worldwide > Australia, New Zealand & the Pacific
Reload this Page >

Shareholder revolt looms at VA

Australia, New Zealand & the Pacific Airline and RPT Rumours & News in Australia, enZed and the Pacific

Shareholder revolt looms at VA

Old 3rd Jul 2018, 10:01
  #61 (permalink)  
 
Join Date: Apr 2007
Location: AU
Posts: 246
Likes: 0
Received 7 Likes on 7 Posts
Is this a forum on prune or virginetics?
On Guard is offline  
Old 3rd Jul 2018, 10:23
  #62 (permalink)  
 
Join Date: Jul 2001
Location: The Ponderosa
Age: 52
Posts: 844
Received 15 Likes on 5 Posts
Out of interest did the crew work out a name for his rickshaw in HK?

hoss is offline  
Old 3rd Jul 2018, 13:34
  #63 (permalink)  
 
Join Date: Sep 2002
Location: Australia
Posts: 751
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes on 0 Posts
Talking

Originally Posted by hoss
Out of interest did the crew work out a name for his rickshaw in HK?

😆😆😆 That’s Gold!

The Bullwinkle is offline  
Old 4th Jul 2018, 11:27
  #64 (permalink)  
 
Join Date: Jul 2001
Location: The Ponderosa
Age: 52
Posts: 844
Received 15 Likes on 5 Posts
Sad news.

Just read about the HNA chairman falling to his death in France.

(South East Asia Forum)
hoss is offline  
Old 4th Jul 2018, 13:07
  #65 (permalink)  
 
Join Date: Nov 2004
Location: 41,000'
Posts: 279
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes on 0 Posts
Never mind the shareholder revolt, there will be a frontline staff revolt if the renewed DAMP policy comes through...
piston broke again is offline  
Old 4th Jul 2018, 21:39
  #66 (permalink)  
 
Join Date: Feb 2002
Location: NSW
Posts: 4,268
Received 31 Likes on 23 Posts
21% shareholder HNA has defaulted on major lending and aircraft leases. It is thought that the Chairman took a dive or was pushed. No more free cash from then to the house of cards...
TBM-Legend is offline  
Old 5th Jul 2018, 08:05
  #67 (permalink)  
 
Join Date: Aug 2006
Location: Land of Oz
Posts: 302
Received 26 Likes on 10 Posts
Who thought that TBM, please let us know.
No Idea Either is offline  
Old 5th Jul 2018, 08:31
  #68 (permalink)  
 
Join Date: Feb 2002
Location: NSW
Posts: 4,268
Received 31 Likes on 23 Posts
I have a senior friend in the HK banking world who told me that there is some speculation in HK. Also our man 'ran and jumped on the wall" said another eyewitness! Not normal to do that with a 50' drop on the other side.

House in HK looks like a nice shack for a Cathay pilot crash pad..
TBM-Legend is offline  
Old 6th Jul 2018, 02:13
  #69 (permalink)  
 
Join Date: Aug 2010
Location: Gate_15L
Age: 50
Posts: 1
Likes: 0
Received 2 Likes on 1 Post

Tigerair chief Merren McArthur takes on aviation boys' club as Virgin seeks CEO

Merren McArthur has been at the helm of Tigerair Australia for less than three months, but she is already being touted as a possible successor to take over as chief executive of its parent, Virgin Australia.

Last month, Virgin boss John Borghetti announced his decision to depart the airline by the end of next year, leaving McArthur and Virgin’s head of domestic and international operations, Rob Sharp, as the two most likely internal candidates to replace him.

If McArthur were to be successful she would become the first woman to lead one of Australia’s two major airlines. As it is, she is a rarity in the global aviation industry, a notorious boys’ club.

Females make up just 3 per cent of global airline bosses and when the board of governors of the International Air Transport Association (IATA) posed for a picture to mark its annual meeting in Sydney in June, there was just one woman among 26 executives.



Adding fuel to the fire, IATA’s chairman, Qatar Airways chief Akbar al Baker, responded to questions by insisting only a man could lead his airline “because it is a very challenging position”.McArthur is unruffled by the IATA controversy. “I [grew up with] two older brothers,” she explains. “I’ve never accepted that because I’m a woman I should not be expected to do this or do that.

"There are events and times when you come across people who aren’t comfortable with dealing with a woman. To me, it’s like water off a duck’s back. I’m just going to continue to do what I do.”

McArthur says to achieve meaningful change in the industry’s gender balance, there needs to be a break in the cycle.

“If it becomes a male-dominated industry, then there are certain expectations about what it is to be a leader in that industry.


“People, by human nature, recruit in their own likeness. If you’ve got lots of male leaders then they’ll tend to look at other male leaders.”

This philosophy could work in reverse – and in McArthur’s favour – as Virgin Australia conducts its global search to replace Borghetti, who is leaving the airline after eight years at the helm. The search will be led by a woman, Virgin chair Elizabeth Bryan.

Asked a week before Borghetti’s announcement if she has ambitions to run a major airline, McArthur is non-committal.

“Maybe,” she says. “I don’t really have these lofty goals that I focus on. I focus on my current role. This is a big enough airline for me right now.” But she adds: “Whatever opportunities arise, I’ll grab.”

That’s certainly what McArthur has done throughout her career.

Over the past 10 years, the former lawyer and mother of four daughters has taken on a number of leadership positions at Virgin Australia: running its regional airline, setting up its cargo division and heading up the airline’s alliance network.

Determined to make the move from law to business, McArthur joined what was then Virgin Blue in 2008, when it was run by Brett Godfrey. She has always been attracted to “challenger brands” and Virgin fitted the bill.

“At that stage, Virgin was ... relatively young and I really liked how it had changed the aviation market in Australia.”


However, neither aviation nor law were McArthur’s first career choice. Growing up in Melbourne with her two brothers and younger sister, she wanted to become a diplomat, following a student exchange to South Africa.

Having been advised it was a good pathway, she studied arts/law at the University of Melbourne. Although she gained good marks, they weren’t quite high enough for her chosen calling, so she became a reluctant lawyer.

From the start, she was drawn to commercial law and ended up working on some of Victoria’s big privatisations during the 1990s. After 20 years, she wanted to move on from law and take on a business role.

This wasn’t as easy as she thought.

The transition from lawyer

“There was an expectation that partners in law firms don’t have the commercial and business sense to be able to work in a corporate environment,” she explains.

So when the role of deputy state solicitor in Western Australia came up in 2005, she decided to take it. This was a big decision as she was leaving behind a high-paying job and packing up her young family – all four girls were still in primary school – to move to Perth.

“When I told the managing partner that I was leaving the partnership to go and work in the public service, he nearly fell off his chair,” she says. “It was about a quarter of the income.”

After two years, McArthur got her entry into the corporate world, working on commercial agreements for Rio Tinto’s iron ore division. A year later, she made the leap to Virgin Blue, settling the family in Brisbane.

These interstate moves were possible because McArthur’s husband is an architect and could work from home.

During her first six months at Virgin, McArthur kept thinking “once this particular project or this particular challenge is behind us, it will settle down and it will get back to business as usual but it never did”.

One of the more testing periods was during the October 2011 grounding of Qantas’ fleet, when McArthur was responsible for putting on extra Virgin flights to help stranded customers.

But the closest she came to a full-blown career crisis was a year earlier, when she found herself in the middle of a showdown between Virgin Australia and the US Department of Transport, which had rejected a proposed alliance between Virgin and Delta Air Lines.

McArthur, who was in charge of Virgin’s alliance network and responsible for the Delta Air Lines alliance, was sitting on one side of a long table, flanked by Borghetti, head of government affairs Jane McKeon and Australian ambassador to the US Kim Beazley. Opposite them at the department’s new headquarters down the road from Capitol Hill were two rows of about 16 officials.

Virgin’s alliance strategy – one of the key planks of Borghetti’s airline overhaul – appeared to be in disarray.

“We weren’t prepared for [the Delta knock-back] at all,” she concedes. “Everybody just assumed this was a slam dunk because we were the two smaller operators on that route. We were just expecting it to be a yes and the ACCC had already approved it.”

To make matters worse, Virgin’s alliance with Air New Zealand was rejected by the Australian competition regulator just a day after the Delta knockback.

“All in 24 hours,” says McArthur. “I was thinking, oh my gosh, this is my career.”

But McArthur and Virgin managed to turn both decisions around, and this intense period helped pave the way for her promotion in May to run its low-cost carrier Tigerair. (Air New Zealand this year switched sides, announcing it would end its alliance with Virgin and set up a codeshare partnership with Qantas.)

Seeking stability

McArthur won’t say much about her plans for Tigerair. It is early days and after the interview, she is heading off to brief the Virgin board about her strategy. During her first two weeks she met with about 200 staff, roughly a third of the airline’s workforce, visiting crews and riding with pilots.

She has been charged with stabilising the airline after its earnings took a hit from a regulatory dispute in Indonesia, which prompted the unexpected exit from its Bali route last year. Earnings fell almost 13 per cent in the first half to $6.7 million as a result.

She takes umbrage at a suggestion she is at the unglamorous end of a glamorous industry.

“Low cost doesn’t mean you have to be cheap and nasty,” she insists. “To me, I see it as innovative and providing a good value proposition where people can choose what they want and pay for what they want and keep the airline industry competitive.”

We return to the subject of the day – being a woman in such a male-dominated industry.

“I haven’t tried to develop my skills to be a man, but perhaps I’ve developed my skills to be effective in that environment,” she says.

“Sometimes you need to change the way you message to make sure you’re heard. Importantly, once you get comfortable in that environment, you can use your femininity to your advantage. I quite enjoy that.”

https://www.afr.com/brand/boss/tiger...0180613-h11brd
We here at Virgin can virtue signal with the best of them.....
Gate_15L is offline  
Old 6th Jul 2018, 07:06
  #70 (permalink)  
 
Join Date: Sep 2002
Location: Australia
Posts: 751
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes on 0 Posts
Merren McArthur!!! WTF?!?
So it’s more important to just appoint a female CEO, rather than a more competent male who actually knows how to run an airline?!?
Good luck to everybody at Virgin if she gets the job.
The Bullwinkle is offline  
Old 6th Jul 2018, 08:27
  #71 (permalink)  
 
Join Date: Jun 2017
Location: Australia
Posts: 76
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes on 0 Posts
Originally Posted by The Bullwinkle
So it’s more important to just appoint a female CEO, rather than a more competent male who actually knows how to run an airline?!?
Thats no different to how the cadetship has been run since its inception... I'm all for females in this or any industry, and in any capacity - but appointments should be on merit only.

EDIT: in no way am I suggesting that any of the females that have gone through the cadetship are not good pilots - I don't know any of them but I assume they are just as competent (if not more so) that their male counterparts. All I am suggesting is that preference was given to females over males during the selection process.

Last edited by Kranz; 6th Jul 2018 at 08:31. Reason: Add EDIT
Kranz is offline  
Old 6th Jul 2018, 09:15
  #72 (permalink)  
 
Join Date: Oct 2014
Location: Margaritaville
Posts: 76
Likes: 0
Received 5 Likes on 3 Posts
It would be a very sad reflection on how attractive/respected Virgin is if she’s the best they can find after a worldwide search.
Tommy Bahama is offline  
Old 6th Jul 2018, 09:28
  #73 (permalink)  
 
Join Date: Sep 2012
Location: Adelaide
Posts: 605
Received 13 Likes on 3 Posts
The CEO Hunger Games has begun. The people who think they are in the hunt or are being pushed forward are harnessing the power of the press to advocate their position.

The next few months will be interesting as the cat fighting and bitch slapping at the C level begins - or becomes more obvious.

One thing is for sure, a certain well dressed individual will be working the angles to make sure that whomever takes over doesn't go through and "trash" his legacy - whatever that may be
Snakecharma is offline  
Old 6th Jul 2018, 09:52
  #74 (permalink)  
 
Join Date: May 2002
Location: In a box
Posts: 348
Received 12 Likes on 5 Posts
As head of freight, she allegedly pointed at the clapped out 146 and asked "what is that?".....................................

Great.

Oh and I grew up with five sisters, maybe I could be CEO material.
Servo is offline  
Old 6th Jul 2018, 10:41
  #75 (permalink)  
 
Join Date: Feb 2015
Location: Santa Barbara
Posts: 912
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes on 0 Posts
All in 24 hours, says McArthur. I was thinking, oh my gosh, this is my career.
mmm, is it just me? But I would be thinking 'This doesn't look good for the company that pays my wages, or for the employees and shareholders that are counting on me to get this deal done' f@rking lawyers, they're all the same whether they're politicians or business people, scumbags.
The name is Porter is offline  
Old 6th Jul 2018, 11:18
  #76 (permalink)  
 
Join Date: Apr 2007
Location: AU
Posts: 246
Likes: 0
Received 7 Likes on 7 Posts
  • 15% females makeup the cadet apps yet the goal is to give them 50% of the positions? How is that getting the best pilots?
On Guard is offline  
Old 6th Jul 2018, 12:06
  #77 (permalink)  
 
Join Date: Feb 2002
Location: NSW
Posts: 4,268
Received 31 Likes on 23 Posts
...clapped out 146

What "clapped out" 146 was that? [Tell me about your aircraft please.] I'm sure the crews flying these aircraft are happy to be flying a jet and have good time off...
TBM-Legend is offline  
Old 6th Jul 2018, 13:03
  #78 (permalink)  
 
Join Date: May 2017
Location: Brisbane
Posts: 23
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes on 0 Posts
We’re screwed, EB and MM.

RIP

Anyone got the number to that truck driving school....
Interceptheading is offline  
Old 6th Jul 2018, 13:22
  #79 (permalink)  
 
Join Date: Sep 2002
Location: Australia
Posts: 751
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes on 0 Posts
Originally Posted by Interceptheading
We’re screwed, EB and MM.

RIP

Anyone got the number to that truck driving school....
The Bullwinkle is offline  
Old 6th Jul 2018, 22:40
  #80 (permalink)  
 
Join Date: Dec 2015
Location: Aus
Posts: 124
Received 13 Likes on 9 Posts
What he said ^^

The lunatics have taken over the asylum
Switchbait is offline  

Thread Tools
Search this Thread

Contact Us - Archive - Advertising - Cookie Policy - Privacy Statement - Terms of Service

Copyright © 2024 MH Sub I, LLC dba Internet Brands. All rights reserved. Use of this site indicates your consent to the Terms of Use.