Another disaster result. How long can this company survive? Losses in nearly every part of the business.
How can an airline in a country that is part of a duopoly not make money?

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From the Age:

Virgin Australia has reported a $315 million full-year loss as soft demand, higher fuel costs and unfavourable currency movements made the task of turning it around an even bigger challenge for its new boss.

The result is an improvement on last year's $653 million loss, but is still the airline's third-worst performance. Virgin Airways has now posted seven straight years of losses adding up to $1.9 billion.

The company said it would make 750 corporate and head office roles redundant by the end of the current financial year to save $75 million in costs.

In May, Virgin warned that on an underlying level, which strips out some one-off costs, earnings would fall by at least $100 million and swing to a loss of $35.6 million, or lower. The result came in worse than that, with an underlying loss of $71.2 million.

Virgin's chief executive Paul Scurrah, who was brought in in March to replace long-time boss John Borghetti, said the result showed the airline must "improve" its financial performance.

"While we have continued to grow revenue and have a strong loyal customer base, we need to make changes to our costs to ensure we see financial benefit from the growth in our business," he said

Finally, a CEO that knows what he’s doing!
The fact that there’s 750 oxygen thieves in head office sipping lattes whilst trying to justify their made up positions is reprehensible.
The fact that Paul Scurrah has realised this just demonstrates that he does have a handle on where all the waste is actually occurring.
And if there’s 750 excess staff in head office, I shudder to think how many people that they actually have up there!
It’s about time Virgin had a CEO that’s focussed on the core business and not all the peripheral bull****.
Great to see one good decision being made after 10 years of poor decisions.
Maybe, just maybe, Virgin will be able to survive after the immense damage that has been done during the last disastrous decade.

What on earth are all these people doing?

The exact same conditions that Qantas operated in profitably.

Does anyone know the total staff at VA? 750 not required, just wow.

Totally spot on and agree. The perception that they’ve been top heavy has finally been acknowledged. I think now they have a CEO to fix the rot.

Isn't that approximately what QF lost in ONE year a little while back? And they seem to be doing ok now.

750 staff to go will just be the start of the blood-letting. Also to go should be their International fleet of A330s and B777s: niche operations are all well and good but they don’t pay their way in price sensitive and very competitive markets.

The new CEO has inherited a 24 carat poisoned chalice. Lucky bloke!!

I’ve seen this happen from time to time. Management make a big announcement about large job cuts as a way of “tightening their belts” because investors like to see companies cut costs. But after the layoffs those jobs slowly come back, except with new names and reduced conditions, and eventually the top heavy layers of office dwellers reappear.

One of life’s great mysteries; why do people keep investing in airlines?

If I flew international I would be worried, unlike domestic here it’s a cut throat market. Plan for the worst hope for best, hope he can turn it around the last thing Australia needs is Qantas operating domestically on its own. Good luck.

Why don’t people just see this for what it is?
New CEO joins.
Tanks the profit first year and has large writedowns to clear the decks.
Announces large job cuts but doesn’t disparage the previous management funnily enough.
Moves on some upper level managers to bring his own team in to share the spoils.
Miraculously returns the business to profit and is handsomely rewarded for doing so.
Wash, Rinse, Repeat.

The level of corruption, incompetence and greed amongst Australian corporates is breathtaking and the rest of Australia is too busy working to live to be able to give a ****.

Virgins issues run deep. Legacy issues created by legacy management a long time ago, with resolution of those issues having never been resolved. Il Deuce did very little for his $46m in earnings didn’t he? Issues, where does one start:

• Start with the day the airline floated itself on the stock market. A lemon of an investment that has never been worthy of investing in.
• Then there is the egotistical fools like Godfrey, Borghetti and an assortment of bottom feeding executive management. Some of the ‘mid-tier managers’ have been there since the beginning of the airlines life. Get rid of them! Some have never worked for another business or organisation. Time to go.
• Ground handling: some of it is contracted out, time for the rest of it to be contracted out. A waste of money employing staff on the actual VA payroll. Take load controllers, duty managers, operational management, training also. Contract it out.
• VA still has a half baked structure with a supposed business class and economy class. It’s not. It’s no comparison to its competition Qantas. For all its faults, Qantas has a defined structure of what is economy and what is business. The jets interiors reflect that. Virgin is an all economy layout with a couple of piddly differences up the front of the cabin. Not a true business class. I can’t believe these muppets still haven’t got it right after all this time.
• ‘Specialists’’: Anyone with ‘specialist’ in their job title should be dispatched to the unemployment line. Created positions for people on ‘mates rates’ or for loyalists who do nothing other than lick management’s kyber’s and drink latte’s all day. Specialists - gooone.
• Multiple fleet type: The day they branched out from 737’s was another historical day in which they started to bleed money. Ansett part 2 if you ask me. Peter Ables killed Ansett the day he stood foot in Toulouse. VA management have done no better.
• Airline acquisitions: oh Lordy, where does one start. Another series of poor executive decision making buying non-profitable or barely-profitable lemons at the wrong time. VA is still paying the price.
• How about a decent finance team? VA have blundered on fuel hedge costs endlessly over the past 19 years and still can’t get it right. And a general head office culture consisting of overpaid almost bureaucrat style employees who act as if they are in the public service.

As has been pointed out, VA is part of a duopoly yet has never hammered home true value or been a viable investment for the average punter. It’s history of losing money is astonishing, and without numerous buy-ins and ‘bailouts’ its a miracle this lemon of an airline is still in existence. Besides, why fly VA or QF International when ANZ offers a far better service in every aspect of an airline - it’s modern aircraft, seats, lounges and customer service. Can’t be matched.

Without a doubt, this story is to be con’t........

Having recently flown AirNZ a number of times internationally, in my opinion QF international and domestic offer a far superior service in all aspects. The AirNZ boiled lollies are good though so I guess they got that right. Each to their own though....

Paragraph 377,

When will you tell us what you really think? :} :ok: