Netjets!

[slam dunk 4]

Hi everyone,

what´s the current situation with Netjets? Reason for my question:

I was screened for them in Oct. 2007. Passed all and was offered a job.
Decided to stay with my company where I was working as a F/O . Became a Capt. . And guess what? It looks like that we will be fired!

Does anyone know if Netjets would accept my reapplication?

cheers

[lpokijuhyt]

Ya, I would call them right away! They are having massive recruitment road shows at the moment. Good luck!

[PAPI-74]

Don't forget your tow rope to pull out the moth-balled jets.

Recruitment road show....LOL Good one!!!

[CE550B]

Hmmm........right. Before the wolfpack is going to chew up your backside, you might have read somewere that we're in full reverse at the moment. Better try in again 4 years time (and do your homework )

[dan1165]

I heard they are looking for more than 500 pilots !!!!!!

[shawn.barker]

Lay OFFs!!

A good friend of mine was just in Columbus, where there base is, when they made the announcement that they were laying off 500 pilots! And supposedly thats just the first round.

Good Luck!!

[Sean Dillon]

You could try BMI or Thomson Airways...desperate I hear!

(Sorry...sarcasm..lowest form and all that...)

[northern boy]

Slam Dunk, I'm sure you get the general drift but just to recap:

NJ US: 500 out the door last month.

NJME: Don't even ask.

NJE: 4 year "voluntary" program in force. Details published elsewhere. No recruitment, upgrades or fleet changes for at least that period. That's 4 years in case you missed it. Recruitment staff and some trainers now no longer doing the job as there is no foreseeable requirement for their services. Office staff reduced.

Horrible rumours of redundancies after Christmas.Hopefully that's all they are. Company strenuously denying this, which worries me.

Lots of aircraft in storage. Lots of aircraft disposed of.( entire fleets in some cases) All aircraft for sale for the "right price".

BH announce that they are still behind NJ. This worries me even more.

Redundancies at FSI ( owned by BH) see what I mean?

Management still enjoying all the usual benefits, so we can all breathe easily. I mean what's the world coming to if you can't f**k up and get away with it.

If you have an airline job then stay with it if you can and forget NJ for at least 5 years. Consider yourself extremely fortunate.

If you get laid off then look upon it as a good opportunity to get the hell away from aviation which is rapidly turning into a playground for pimply kids with rich parents and a dock labour scheme for everyone else. You would be better off driving a train, probably better paid and you wouldn't have to suffer airport security or greenpeace blaming you for dead polar bears.

This year was definitely a bad time to give up sniffing glue..

[jr of dallas]

........Good one!

[south coast]

Northern Boy, until reading your post, I had heard nothing of potential redundancies after Christmas, is that a new rumour or one you just started off yesterday?

[northern boy]

South coast,

That one was doing the rounds about a month ago. Heard it whilst in the US on last tour and it really cheered me up. As I said, hopefully just a rumour. Looking at the daily averages there may be some truth in it. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.

btw I am not in the habit of making things like that up just for the fun of it. It's my living as well.

Now where's that tube of glue.....

[Damianik]

The boy was very smart at deciding to stay with his old airline and become a captain...sounds like what i should have done...

If u didnt you would be in this situation as well man, i was as well selected in october 2007, when they hired pretty much everybody that showed up in front of their door. I am not that good a pilot after all then :-)

Anyways, as per above, 4 years at least before new people in.

D

[Mike Oxbig]

Hi Northern Boy,

Was at FSI in Farnborough last month on recurrent and was told they were recruiting! Once guy who was let go in September was brought back in to help out whilst they trained up others (he declined to come back as he had decided to 'persue other interests'). My instructor told me they were getting quite busy across all fleets. If you are due for recurrent soon maybe you could confirm this? I don't believe we are out of the woods by a long shot but there are signs of recovery.

i have heard mutterings of more redundancies after Christmas on another forum, but don't know if it is just doomsayers speculating.

MB

[screwballburling]

"......when they hired pretty much everybody that showed up in front of their door."

Is that so? I know of a pilot with 17k + hours, rated on 2 types NJE operate and never ever got a reply from HR at Lisbon on the 3 occasions he applied in 8 years.

I believe he is quite happy it turned out that way, as he is still on a fulltime salary doing part time hours. 100 hrs per year, if that.

[slam dunk 4]

thx for the replies!

I was asking for Netjets Europe!

But it looks like that everywhere is the same situation!

thank you nothern boy for your post especially. thats exactly what i think!!!

good luck to everyone

[northern boy]

Hello Mike, did my last recurrent in August and it was all doom and gloom. Honestly I can't keep up with it any more. Since starting JS and sending back the BB (at my own expense I might add, does no-one accept amex?) I have not been privy to any form of communication from our glorious leadership. Quite how I am supposed to communicate when the passwords change I have no idea. carrier pigeon perhaps.

If FSI are as you say, bringing people back then good. Maybe things are picking up. I sincerely hope so since all my attempts to find alternative employment have failed miserably. Seems you cannot fly for the airlines these days if 1: your voice has broken, 2: you have started wearing long trousers 3: have more than 200 hours and 4: do not have access to sufficient funds to buy the aircraft you are flying, pay all running costs for 2 years and pay the airline management their salaries and pensions (plus bonuses) for the privilege. And that's for six months until little Johnny Fartpants completes training and replaces you. At twice the cost.

NJ, whatever their faults have at least not gone down this route. Yet.

A happy xmas and simply spiffing new year to all my colleagues. I hope to see you all in 2011 provided I have not drifted off into total oblivion by then.

Toodle pip.

[Mike Oxbig]

NB,

Didn't realise you are on JS. I presume you still look in on 'The Other Forum' to keep abreast on what is going on?

Good luck and hang in there.

[seupp]

Northern Boy

I used the DHL account number that the co told me to use...

Take care and hope we'll be back soon.

[OFBSLF]

From today's NY Times:

Potential Successor to Buffett Has Tough Task

By GERALDINE FABRIKANT
Published: December 3, 2009

Maybe Warren E. Buffett should have stuck with railroads.

“We are instilling a culture of cost discipline and planning,” said David L. Sokol, who took over as chief of NetJets this year.

Warren E. Buffett, a NetJets user, has posed with his friend Bill Gates in NetJets ads and has endorsed private jet travel.

He once declared after an ill-fated bet on US Airways that he would resist any further urges to invest in airlines. But he ventured anyway into a high-end business that is an airline competitor of sorts — NetJets.

Right about now, he may wish that he had simply bought more of the railways he has accumulated over the years.

At NetJets, the returns have been disappointing — and lately the losses severe. Through his investment company, Berkshire Hathaway, he bought the private jet travel business, which caters to the affluent, for $725 million in 1998. Even though Berkshire does not provide detailed results for this small piece of its empire, insiders confirm that Mr. Buffett has yet to recover his investment.

With problems mounting at the unit — heavy losses and allegations of business improprieties — Mr. Buffett dispatched David L. Sokol to straighten out NetJets in July.

Mr. Sokol’s effort to turn the company around is being watched closely, in part because it provides a glimpse into the management style of a man considered a possible heir apparent to Mr. Buffett at Berkshire.

Mr. Sokol, who previously ran a utility company, has his work cut out for him. NetJets is a luxury business, but its revenue is shrinking, its management is in upheaval and its problems include accusations of improper workplace behavior.

While some former NetJets executives describe his management approach as overly aggressive, Mr. Sokol counters that he merely has “high expectations” for planning and execution and conveys them to employees.

Mr. Sokol describes his mission succinctly. “We are instilling a culture of cost discipline and planning.” In an e-mail message to the staff, he wrote that he had never seen a company of NetJets’ size that operated “without an integrated business plan” and with a budget that was “often ignored.”

Within a week of his arrival in July, Richard T. Santulli, the founder and chief executive of NetJets, resigned. According to several people close to the company, Mr. Santulli was unhappy that a Berkshire executive was brought in to provide oversight.

Mr. Santulli, who declined to comment for this article, is widely considered a visionary for creating a time-share business model for air travel, and a number of current and former executives fondly describe how he treated employees as family, perhaps a shortcoming when the business turned sour and cuts were called for. Initially, Mr. Sokol, 53, had been looking into allegations of excess spending and a consultant who was paid by both NetJets and a supplier. Those issues had been described in several letters to Berkshire from company employees, although the company has not identified the writers.

In a recent phone interview, Mr. Sokol said he had “documented the issues and gotten them fixed.”

After Mr. Santulli resigned, Mr. Sokol became chairman and chief executive, this time with a mandate to rein in costs. That decision was interpreted as a strong Buffett endorsement of Mr. Sokol, who he had no previous experience in airlines or luxury goods.

At MidAmerican Energy Holdings Company, Mr. Sokol turned a small energy company into a leading utility company supplying electricity and natural gas. From his post at the utility, now a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway, which acquired the company in 2000, he notably supported the idea of lowering greenhouse gas emissions but rejected a complicated cap and trade system to achieve the goal. The Iowa company, where he still serves as chairman, posted $13.9 billion in revenue last year.

“If there is something prized at Berkshire, it is the ability to commit capital,” said Thomas A. Russo, a partner at Gardner Russo & Gardner, whose clients own Berkshire Hathaway stock. “Mr. Sokol has over the years committed substantial amounts of capital both within the U.S. and overseas, and the returns on those investments have been strong.”

But if Mr. Sokol is to succeed at NetJets, a company a fraction the size of MidAmerican, he needs to lower its costs while maintaining a luxury image.

Delivering a pleasant experience is crucial to the company’s marketing efforts. None other than Mr. Buffett has said so. A NetJets user, he has posed with his pal Bill Gates in NetJets ads and endorsed private jet travel as a life enhancer. By owning stakes in jets that they share with other owners, customers get private flights for far less than the cost of owning their own plane.

The recession has taken a toll on the business, though. NetJets lost $531 million in the first nine months of 2009, and revenue fell 42 percent from a year earlier, to $2 billion. And that was not its first loss. Although NetJets had pretax profits between 2006 and 2008 of more than $550 million, according to one person knowledgeable about the company who spoke only under condition of anonymity, its record has been spotty.

“I call it the Scooby-Doo profitability rationale,” said Robert Aboulafia, an aviation consultant with the Teal Group, a consulting firm. “They were always close to achieving profitability, but there was always one thing that stood in the way, and it was usually related to expansion.”

As sales fell off in 2008 and 2009, Mr. Santulli had begun selling some planes, but he resisted more drastic steps. To avoid layoffs, he favored voluntary measures like asking pilots to forgo holiday pay and to take additional time off. His reluctance to take more aggressive action may have been part of his downfall, Brian Foley, an aviation consultant, suggested.

Could NetJets have been tougher on costs earlier? “Sure they could,” said a former company executive because he did not want to speak publicly about NetJets after leaving. “But clients know that customer service really matters. Without it, air travel is just a commodity product and you can’t compete.”

Mr. Sokol is cutting more deeply. He has begun a program to reduce NetJet’s 7,800-employee work force by up to 11 percent, including 495 of its 3,100 pilots, and has accelerated plans to sell as many as 10 percent of the company’s 800 planes. Some of the high-end perks, including an annual poker tournament in Las Vegas and Loro Piana sweaters for jet owners, are going away, too. Over all, he expects to take $200 million, or 22 percent, out of the company’s operating costs.

Some former executives have complained about his management methods. A onetime NetJets executive, echoing the views of several others, said that Mr. Sokol was intimidating and put people on the defensive. “When he first came in, he got on the phone with a group of us and said: ‘I expect complete candor. I am taking notes and I expect full disclosure’ “ or their jobs could be at stake, this person recalled.

Mr. Sokol said he simply read from a script and did not make threats. He recalled the script thusly: “If you answer deceptively, that will not be looked upon favorably by the board.”

One thing that has changed is the top management, with some bumpy transitions.

Soon after Mr. Santulli left, Mr. Sokol promoted Ben Murray, who had overseen executive charters. Just weeks later, Mr. Murray was demoted to head of global asset management, where he oversaw the buying and selling of aircraft. Mr. Sokol said that Mr. Murray requested the change to “deal with family issues.” Mr. Murray declined to comment.

Meanwhile, Jim Jacobs, who had been Mr. Santulli’s No. 2, was made an adviser. The transition, according to Mr. Sokol, was part of a longstanding plan by Mr. Jacobs to leave the company at the end of January. Mr. Jacobs, too, declined to comment.

Then in October, the European chairman, Mark Booth, and that unit’s chief executive, Bill Kelly, abruptly resigned. Both of those men also declined to comment for this article, but several people close to the men said they were frustrated at being treated the same as their United States counterparts, even though the overseas business had been profitable for several years. They cited an e-mail message to the entire management team describing cost-control measures, in which Mr. Sokol wrote that any attempt to circumvent them would be dealt with “harshly and swiftly.”

The company had operated on some false assumptions, Mr. Sokol said in a recent interview. “I think there was a view that you could make a good return given who your customers were,” he said. Mr. Foley, the aviation consultant, estimates that NetJets’ customers, fractional jet owners, spend an average of $250,000 a year.

But Mr. Sokol says “there was not as much pricing power as one would have thought.” Though NetJets dominates the field with about 70 percent of the market, rivals like Flight Options provide intense price competition.

Now Mr. Sokol must prove that he can make the business hum without damaging one of the best-known luxury brands in travel. With the cost cuts, he expects the company to be profitable next year, but gone are the suites at the Ohio State University football games and North Face jackets for employees.

Mr. Sokol “had to do something dramatic,” said Bruce C. Greenwald, a professor at Columbia University Business School. “But changing a culture is very difficult, and it is not therefore clear that things will work.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/04/bu...pagewanted=all

[south coast]

Indeed an enlightening article from which it seems MB and BK didnt want to be part of the new team or its methods.

I hope we are on a better path now we have a 'no-nonsense' style leader, but perhaps the path is going to be painful.