So you’re one of those w@nkers that thinks everything an airline does is to screw over the pilot group. Give yourself an uppercut champ.

New guy comes in, clears the decks in the hope of setting himself up for a stellar future.
Standard CEO performance.

My only surprise is that, given Scurrah’s predecessors performance, he didn’t clear more of the decks.
750 staff is less than 10%. AJ cleared more than that in 2013 and that was from a profitable company.

Was he handed a hospital pass - possibly, but its a public company so caveat emptor. Surely he is smart enough to figure that out.

I forsee a period of pain and anguish for staff and shareholders alike.

Good Luck!

haha I hope you’re joking. You do realize that virgin Australia is smaller than most regionals in the USA? Any US carrier would have zero interested in a failing business.

Wonder if it’s the A330 operation or the B777 operation which will likely be culled ��

Word on the street is pilots not affected. Maybe a trimming on HK who knows. “How valueable is the slot?” is the question I guess. I hope they can make it work.

Quite a number of interesting things came out of yesterday’s announcement.....

Firstly, people here probably should show a little more empathy to the fact that 750 people will be losing their jobs over the next 12 months. That will certainly be tough on the families that are involved. 750 jobs may only represent 7.5% of the workforce - but the fact is that is a significant number or head office staff. I personally don’t know how cutting those 750 jobs won’t have an impact on day to day operations of the airline. Will flight planners, load controllers, crew controllers, rostering staff be safe? And how will this affect things like the PBS and already problematic rosters that have the troops up and about? Having said all of that - there is definitely a glut of staff in the Village and in the other ‘Head Office’ overlooking Circular Quay.

It is good to see PS making the hard decisions - they certainly need to be made to ensure that this place survives. However there is something fundamentally wrong with the culture at Virgin and this relates to operational staff as well as the office staff. Some examples:
- Single runway operations in Sydney last week, 5 paxing cabin crew but no CS due to disrupt. Not one single cabin crew was happy to act up as CS - flight cancelled and 170 people now stuck in Sydney.
- A ludicrous situation where cabin crew can’t operate a MEL PER MEL return. I’m sick and tired of heading to PH and whilst I sit around for 2 hours before coming home, that all of the cabin crew get off or go to the hotel. Or the even more stupid case of the return operating cabin crew paxing over, and the operating cabin crew over paxing home.
- VA has training managers for every fleet. It has standards managers for every fleet. It has a manager who oversees the training managers and standards managers. It has a fleet manager for every fleet. It has a manager who oversees all the fleet managers. It has base managers in every base. It has a manager to oversee the base managers. It has a manager to oversee all the EBAs. And it finally has a GMFO who oversees all the managers who oversee the managers. (Confused yet?). When a Standards Manager of a fleet of 5 or 6 aeroplanes is on Check Captain pay plus 20% (give or take) one has to wonder if those roles are safe in this right sizing. One also has to wonder why when you have all these managers in training and standard, why you have Training FOs and Check and Training Captains writing sim profiles on admin days?
- You have the situation where managers aren’t using the staff car park and instead use Short Term car parks at a cost of I’d suggest $5k a year.
- This one I might cop some stick for - but when Sydney goes down to one runway, that is not the Company’s fault. When you hear multiple crews getting on to AMCO and telling them to tell crewing that they won’t be extending, you have to wonder. Now sometimes crew are legitimately tired, and they should get off the aircraft no questions asked. But when people decide at the start of the day before it all turns to crap that they won’t be extending, then perhaps that’s part of the culture issue too. Who does the ‘screw the company’ attitude really hurt? Ultimately every time you put a limit on FDPs in an EBA the Company will roster towards that. People forget that those increased FDPs were as a result of getting 23 days off in 56.
- There is a CHC base of over 50 pilots despite their only being 1-2 departures a day from that port.

Those are just some of the cultural and systemic issues surrounding this place. Unfortunately I think the pilots have become immune to this place losing money hand over fist - and that’s a problem. The new CEO has a massive task ahead of him, I hope for the sake of a lot of guys and girls careers, and the subsequent effect on families, that he gets it right.

Golden opportunity about nine years ago. Branding, paint scheme the works. Wish Scurrah got the job back then. Imagine he did and JB took the top job at QF..

To trade losses for so long is not really sustainable, unless the profits were deliberately sent back to the overseas owners , maybe they are holding the aircraft leases at exorbitant rate, hi interest rate loans etc .
has anyone pulled the financials apart to see where the money really went .

You are right many did see him as the Messiah, personally I listened and gave him the benefit of the doubt as with any new employee. I became concerned when he purchased Skywest as I knew Alliance or Network were the pick of the bunch. I was indeed shouted down and told by one colleague I should leave because I wasn’t singing from the same song sheet.

Regardless, when I met him I treated him with respect and would have had I run into him on his last day. It’s just my opinion that the new CEO would have done a better job had he been afforded the opportunity 9 years ago. Maybe I’m wrong.

I’ve always believed Qf did a better job as they had that economy of scale you mention plus years more experience. I recall paxing one time on a QF 330 in uniform last minute and couldn’t believe how well I was treated, it was incredible they couldn’t do enough for me despite me being the opposition. I also noted how clean, quiet and calm the atmosphere was in the Qf terminals, I was certainly envious as the opposite is true at Virgin.

Anyway, there are a lot of valid comments on here but some are a little gleeful and I think this is concerning. If Virgin collapsed it would no doubt be replaced be a very low condition competitor with serious clout.

I think Virgin Blue had run its course, the execution and speed at which the conversion was done was a factor in my book.

I will take you to task on this point as your reasoning that pilots won’t extend because they want to “screw the company” is false and malicious.

Virgin Australia has an approved FRMS (Fatigue Risk Management System) in place whereby experts have calculated what is safe and what is not.

If a pilot chooses to exercise discretion, they are in effect saying that they have a greater level of expertise in Fatigue Risk Management than those who designed and implemented the FRMS.

Now if an incident occurs whilst that pilot is operating with the 2 hour discretion period, the pilot is the only one who can be held accountable as he has made a conscious decision to operate outside of the approved FRMS. This could be interpreted as negligence.

And as you say, many pilots make their decision at the start of the day not to extend.

That is in fact the wisest thing to do, rather than making a decision to extend at the end of an already long day where stress and fatigue may impair ones judgement and decision making ability.

And in one well documented case where a pilot did the “company” thing and chose to extend only to incur further delays which took the duty period beyond the allowable 2 hours of discretion, the pilot was thrown to the wolves (CASA) with no support from the company.

The reason that I will always make the decision not to extend is to protect the company, not to screw the company.

And in doing so, I will also protect my passengers, my crew, my aircraft and my licence.

Klink, all pilots are tired and the only way to counter the culture at the top is with an inverse culture at the bottom. I don’t extend because I’ve been extending/extended for a decade or more.

If VA were to wind up the Tiger operation, what would happen to the VA pilots that have transferred over Tiger operation? Would they be able to transfer back to VA or would the be given redundancies like the rest of the TT crew?

Seriously asking for a mate.

Do you have a link to suggest that it isn’t?

Pacific would be on and off profitability. The off season United are pulling back 3 weekly to Sydney and Melbourne so obvious over capacity exists.

PS reaffirmed then importance of USA and the impact it has on its corporate accounts on Sky Mews yesterday. Hong Kong was quoted as early days.

What about the yearly $45m annual bill for the parked Airbus props and embrear jets. How long does that actually go on for?

The 777 is not a big money making machine. Occasionally it may make a bit however if you look at what it brings compared to the cost of running it over the years it has existed, then it is obviously better to use that money somewhere else. At 5 airframes it is a token toy operation. I think, as others have said, they will give the pacific flying to partners in the next couple of years if not sooner.

I’ve asked about this and its scaremongering.

If you feel you can extend then do so if not get off.

The problems started in 2014 ish when a certain chap started sitting people at airports all day then flying them home at max duty -15 minutes. Rosters and crewing practices followed on the downhill slope to gain “efficiencies”. Crew responded with sick leave, inflexibility and not extending.

With SA now appointed permanently as COO I would expect practices to improve in the long term. There is no point pretending like we are still at Brighton Le Sands because we’re not. Certainly there’s room for improvement but it will take time.

Totally get the frustrations but I just say judge it on the day. Having a blanket angry policy just isn’t healthy.

definitely not, just curious to see the financial reporting showing 777 makes a profit or loss.