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-   -   Virgin Australia : 315 Million Loss - How long can they survive? (https://www.pprune.org/australia-new-zealand-pacific/625002-virgin-australia-315-million-loss-how-long-can-they-survive.html)

AerialPerspective 28th Aug 2019 10:32


Originally Posted by Ken Borough (Post 10556043)
Someone commented that some employees are classified as "specialist". In the Australian context, that seems odd but how odd is it to have a General Manager Customer Journey? Believe it or not, that position exists at Tiger!

I've never heard the term specialist except in government departments like the ATO, etc. Yes, GM Customer Journey, what a load of old cobblers. I reckon I know who should go first... the so-called 'People Team'... an over bloated group of control freaks that take millennia to make decisions, dictate every single dot point and full stop of every letter ever written and at least under the previous leader had most management afraid to look sideways without consulting them... absolutely ZERO commercial savvy and the BS-management-speak central distribution centre of the entire outfit. Glorified name for the 'Human Remains' department. There's probably several million saved right there.

ADawg 28th Aug 2019 11:00

The first out the door should be the HR department. Considering all the BS candidates are subjected to during the recruitment process at considerable expense, it would seem all of that nonsense has failed to secure the best fit to manage this company. Fail.

VH-FTS 28th Aug 2019 11:02


Sooo true, watch it lose money until all the major EBA's are signed for no increase, then a miraculous turn around
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.

AerialPerspective 28th Aug 2019 11:10


Originally Posted by ADawg (Post 10556096)
The first out the door should be the HR department. Considering all the BS candidates are subjected to during the recruitment process at considerable expense, it would seem all of that nonsense has failed to secure the best fit to manage this company. Fail.

It goes deeper than that... I suspect that they have been at the root of recruiting the sort of people that if, by a miracle, someone has gotten through the gauntlet to actually obtain a position that they are well qualified for and have a proven track record of being adept at, this weaselly group of what can only be called a club set about undermining it and managers generally get led down the path by these no hopers, hence any expertise that - pardon the pun - 'lands' in the company is quickly sought out and eliminated... I've known more than a few people very well qualified and respected who've been parachuted into this toxic place and given the big A not long after because of I don't know, people of low intellect and total ineptitude are threatened by them or something and orchestrate their demise... often the people doing the orchestrating preside over total disasters in their own areas but that is never brought to book... at the very least the human remains department seem to have been the enablers of stupid people getting jobs who then undermine anyone who tries to get the place running in the right direction.
What's worse is that from what I'm told, they've all arrived with some HR degree but not one day of experience or understanding of (some would say even the capacity to develop an understanding of) the airline business or the special circumstances that shift and operational and/or crew operate in.

das Uber Soldat 28th Aug 2019 12:03


Originally Posted by ADawg (Post 10556096)
The first out the door should be the HR department. Considering all the BS candidates are subjected to during the recruitment process at considerable expense, it would seem all of that nonsense has failed to secure the best fit to manage this company. Fail.

Hah, tell me about it. Telling them to stick their offer up their ass was a fabulous experience. Having interviewed for and been accepted by every major in the country, that lot were by far the worst to deal with during the interview process.

NumptyAussie 28th Aug 2019 13:01


Originally Posted by das Uber Soldat (Post 10556150)
Hah, tell me about it. Telling them to stick their offer up their ass was a fabulous experience. Having interviewed for and been accepted by every major in the country, that lot were by far the worst to deal with during the interview process.

how many "majors" are in the country?

LKinnon 28th Aug 2019 13:39

Wonder if the lengthy and painful Virgin pilot recruitment process will get better or worse now?

das Uber Soldat 28th Aug 2019 13:56


Originally Posted by NumptyAussie (Post 10556199)
how many "majors" are in the country?

4 give or take?

JoeTripodi 28th Aug 2019 14:02

Yeah their pilot recruitment process is a joke run by failed pilot HR nobodies.
Also enjoyed turning down their crappy offer.

Arthur D 28th Aug 2019 15:11

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!


vee1-rotate 28th Aug 2019 16:07


Originally Posted by AerialPerspective (Post 10556038)
If I were Delta, I'd step in and offer to put the owners out of their misery and offer a low price for the whole outfit. I'd insist it were NOT on a transmission of business basis so that I could throw away anything of no value and just keep the core... Order a bunch of decals for temporary application to the remaining aircraft and then re-employ those I wanted on new conditions. Re-brand the whole thing Delta Australia, keep the colours for cheaper transition and get rid of the archaic reservations system and deploy Delta's IT platform, offshore all the maintenance to the United States to Delta's technical division other than daily maintenance and get rid of every aeroplane that doesn't exist in the parent DL fleet already. LAX would be gone, absorbed into DL, HKG gone, a fleet of 737-800s and get rid of Tiger, just merge any part of value into mainline. Contract out everything except for front line supervision, back office, etc. Load Control as it would presumably now be in the Delta system could be done remotely from Atlanta. Reservations similarly could be done by a combination of res office here and out of hours switched through to the USA (just like QF did with Tulsa and Hammersmith in the 80s and 90s).
I'm no big fan of the Americans as a nation at the moment, but their companies know how to clean a place out and re-set the priorities to making money, particularly in somewhere like Oz where they only have one major competitor.

lol..............

havick 28th Aug 2019 19:12


Originally Posted by AerialPerspective (Post 10556038)
If I were Delta, I'd step in and offer to put the owners out of their misery and offer a low price for the whole outfit. I'd insist it were NOT on a transmission of business basis so that I could throw away anything of no value and just keep the core... Order a bunch of decals for temporary application to the remaining aircraft and then re-employ those I wanted on new conditions. Re-brand the whole thing Delta Australia, keep the colours for cheaper transition and get rid of the archaic reservations system and deploy Delta's IT platform, offshore all the maintenance to the United States to Delta's technical division other than daily maintenance and get rid of every aeroplane that doesn't exist in the parent DL fleet already. LAX would be gone, absorbed into DL, HKG gone, a fleet of 737-800s and get rid of Tiger, just merge any part of value into mainline. Contract out everything except for front line supervision, back office, etc. Load Control as it would presumably now be in the Delta system could be done remotely from Atlanta. Reservations similarly could be done by a combination of res office here and out of hours switched through to the USA (just like QF did with Tulsa and Hammersmith in the 80s and 90s).
I'm no big fan of the Americans as a nation at the moment, but their companies know how to clean a place out and re-set the priorities to making money, particularly in somewhere like Oz where they only have one major competitor.

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.

bangbounceboeing 28th Aug 2019 21:35

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

Berealgetreal 28th Aug 2019 22:21

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.

Colonel_Klink 28th Aug 2019 23:31

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.

juliusg 29th Aug 2019 00:16


Originally Posted by Colonel_Klink (Post 10556672)
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.

Colonel Klink is right on. Couple more points, lot of disparagement in these posts and some who clearly don't fly on VA. (I am VA and QF plat). The VA Business class exceeds QF every time in catering. Flew QF business yesterday Cairns-Sydney; one white, one red wine. That's a choice? No salad. Seeded sourdough or seeded sourdough. Fly VA business often interstate and USA & HK. VA can't be beaten in J. I suspect international will go as well as Tiger, since the results show a decent profit on domestic and 7% revenue growth. Get rid of the stuff that doesn't work, and possibly even ditch the Virgin branding as this costs millions each year too.

Berealgetreal 29th Aug 2019 00:33

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..

fmcinop 29th Aug 2019 00:39


Originally Posted by bangbounceboeing (Post 10556618)
Wonder if it’s the A330 operation or the B777 operation which will likely be culled ��

The 777 is making money whilst the A330 has done nothing but bleed it from day one. My bet is the A330'w will depart the business within the next few years.

Unfortunately when they quote international performance that includes all international flying. VANZ, VAI 737, A330 and B777. VANZ, VAI 737 and the A330 are nothing more then a boat anchor. Shutdown the VAI 737 operation, merge VANZ into VAA and get rid of those A330's.

mostlytossas 29th Aug 2019 01:05


Originally Posted by Berealgetreal (Post 10556697)
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..

How people all forget. When JB went to Virgin he was held up as the messiah! Very pleased you all were that you had stolen him away from Qantas after he missed out on the top job there.
Even Qantas people were crying in their beer that they had got the wrong bloke.
So if he had got the job you ask? My guess Qantas would be in much the same place as it is now and so would Virgin unless they didn't try to take on Qantas full on. Virgin just does not have the economy of scale Qantas does which really hurts when things get tough.

krismiler 29th Aug 2019 01:10

Virgin started out as a low cost carrier and came close to going under, only being saved by the demise of Ansett. It then rapidly ramped up to fill the void, changed to a full service airline, and is now looking like Ansett did before the collapse. An unnecessary mix of aircraft types, bloated office structure, unprofitable routes and a series of "why on earth did they do that ? " decisions have all added up.

With the benefit of hindsight, they would probably have been better of had they stuck to the low cost formulae of one aircraft type and strict cost control. Qantas would have let them have 1/3 of the domestic market and everyone would have been happy. Customers would have been able to choose between a premium carrier or an Australian version of Southwest Air, with the appropriate price differential.


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