Monarch Anyone?
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After the ash cloud episode Monarch nearly went bust. Couldn't afford the photocopier, turned off half the lights in the offices, the works.
Then a £75m bailout arrives and with it a new management. Obviously they need to show that they have a new plan. So it is that we arrive at today's expansion, new aircraft, withdrawal from long haul, new bases and a TV ad campaign of all things.
Problem is its all buzzcocks.
BMIBaby is withdrawing from exactly this market space despite benefiting from over 8 years of regional TV advertising. Nobody in the real world has ever ever heard of Monarch Airlines. You'd need a lot of answers on Family Fortunes before you got to 'Monarch'. The public would name defunct airlines first. Trying to steal Jet2's lunch at Leeds is just asking for a royal spanking. EasyJet's at Luton is risible.
It's all going to end in tears. A niche airline trying to go mainstream is a fraught adventure even in good times. During a massive recession it's kamikaze. That £75m will be burnt by Easter. I just hope there's several more where that came from or else a lot of people are going to end up in the dole.
Monarch is the Titanic. They said it couldn't sink.
Then a £75m bailout arrives and with it a new management. Obviously they need to show that they have a new plan. So it is that we arrive at today's expansion, new aircraft, withdrawal from long haul, new bases and a TV ad campaign of all things.
Problem is its all buzzcocks.
BMIBaby is withdrawing from exactly this market space despite benefiting from over 8 years of regional TV advertising. Nobody in the real world has ever ever heard of Monarch Airlines. You'd need a lot of answers on Family Fortunes before you got to 'Monarch'. The public would name defunct airlines first. Trying to steal Jet2's lunch at Leeds is just asking for a royal spanking. EasyJet's at Luton is risible.
It's all going to end in tears. A niche airline trying to go mainstream is a fraught adventure even in good times. During a massive recession it's kamikaze. That £75m will be burnt by Easter. I just hope there's several more where that came from or else a lot of people are going to end up in the dole.
Monarch is the Titanic. They said it couldn't sink.
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I just love this concept that airlines have shadowy departments monitoring pprune, sussing out who is posting what.
One chap in my airline posted something negative about the chief pilot, who went absolutely spare and tried to work out who it was. He never did!
Besides, B&B is a troll. After posting his thoughts on the merits of joining BA, this should have been pretty obvious.
One chap in my airline posted something negative about the chief pilot, who went absolutely spare and tried to work out who it was. He never did!
Besides, B&B is a troll. After posting his thoughts on the merits of joining BA, this should have been pretty obvious.
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Never seen such a load of cr?p written for a long time from Ray Webster. Where are you coming from - apart from a far flung colony!. To quote ´´nobody´s ever heard of Monarch´´. Where have you been this last 40 odd years - started before you were born my son. June load factor of 92 per cent - nobody know of Monarch Airlines then - get real.
Last edited by compton3bravo; 15th Jul 2012 at 18:19.
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The ash cloud had a number of airlines allegedly teetering on the brink, so they say... It's certainly been a good excuse for penny pinching at my previous employer and is still to this day! I don't think Monarch were the only airline sucker-punched by that whole debacle, especially when you see how wound up other airline executives were getting at the time...!
Monarch Airlines is also an arm off the Monarch group as a whole, the engineering side of which is a very successful business. To reposition the airline, give it a defined focus to work towards and championing that through advertising is absolutely the right thing to do during tough times, resting on its laurels and haemorrhaging more money through inefficiency is not.
Oh and that bit about no-body knowing who Monarch are... Maybe in New Zealand but in the UK? Well, thats simply not true is it...
Monarch Airlines is also an arm off the Monarch group as a whole, the engineering side of which is a very successful business. To reposition the airline, give it a defined focus to work towards and championing that through advertising is absolutely the right thing to do during tough times, resting on its laurels and haemorrhaging more money through inefficiency is not.
Oh and that bit about no-body knowing who Monarch are... Maybe in New Zealand but in the UK? Well, thats simply not true is it...
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We are just a little piece of the entire jigsaw, to really see who we are part of check out "globus family brands", the people who own this " world wide " venture also own us !! Happy reading !
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Dear oh Dear.
Just when we thought a degree of decorum had arrived on this thread, then up pops Gay Webster to spoil it for everyone....Schools are breaking up soon, some have already, I expect he's a little bored for the next 6 weeks or so
Its a pity potential colleagues of ours cannot join the private Monarch thread....where at least we dont have to read the c**p that these individuals write
Just when we thought a degree of decorum had arrived on this thread, then up pops Gay Webster to spoil it for everyone....Schools are breaking up soon, some have already, I expect he's a little bored for the next 6 weeks or so
Its a pity potential colleagues of ours cannot join the private Monarch thread....where at least we dont have to read the c**p that these individuals write
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Monarch “refinanced” themselves in 2009 with 45 million pounds. This according to their management allowed them to be profitable in 2010 but in 2011 they made a loss of 45 million pounds again, which was covered with “refinancing” of 75 million pounds from the shareholders and the Swiss owner Sergio M.......
Well nearly, ‘cos we now find out that they sold their two Airbus 330s to a lessor and contracted to lease them back. Since the two aircraft in question are only 13 years old, the deal must have been worth many millions, so multimillionaire Swiss owner Sergio M didn’t have to dig into his pockets too deeply to “refinance” Monarch. Nevertheless important assets have now been sold and the company is worth that much less and is that much more vulnerable if the extraordinary expansion plans don’t work out in the present and near future adverse financial panorama.
Swiss owner Sergio M installed his son Fabio M at the helm of Monarch some time back and it would appear he has been totally incapable of stemming the haemorrhaging. Of course the real culprits have been the previous management teams and marketing departments but if you are losing 4 million every month, even if you have deep pockets or you didn’t have to earn the money in the first place, you take some actions to mitigate the problem, specially if you stand to lose the money yourself and your close family
Anyway no problem Fabio M has lots of money now and we know that the charter business was not profitable, so we abandon that side of the business. Long haul isn’t profitable either, as most of it is charter and Cosmos cannot sell long haul, so we pull out of that too. The great commercial plan for the future is to go loco/schedule, open new bases, with new and standard routes and do it very quickly before anyone realizes what we are doing, not even the customers! Never have done before but now we have the cash mountain, let’s advertise, as the general public won’t be able to resist us, as soon as they know what we have to offer! We have nothing different to offer from the rest but we ARE Monarch!
Quick expansion did you say? Ah well, yes we have 400+ pilots and yes they only fly 40 to 60 hours a month but we only have 32 hulls and cannot meet our commitments at the moment without incurring our passengers in long delays, even though we have the best engineering company in the UK. OK we open two new bases this year at BHX and EMA and try and poach customers from BMIbaby, with whom no one will want to fly, as they are closing down. We lease 4 hulls from other airlines to do the job until October and we get our foot in the door, expensive deal but we’ll pull thru’....hopefully. All this regardless of the fact that BMIbaby would have cleaned up the majority of would be customers for July, August and September, leaving the dregs to Monarch for the period 11 September to the end of October. If BMI baby routes were such a good bet, why didn’t Monarch buy or partially buy the company? BA would have jumped at any deal and save some jobs, probably better than the total shutdown anyway.
The best one is the proposed base at LBA but enough has been said on that one previously. Just one comment, which is that Monarch will be competing with JET2 on their home base with their leased aircraft against JET2’s wholly owned aircraft, which are fully refurbished+new seats. Any bets on the winner?
Well they have the support of two profitable travel companies namely AVRO and COSMOS, you may say. There was some years ago a reason for AVRO as a flight seat selling agent to the travel trade, when charter flights were the norm and we lived in a totally different travel business environment, but nowadays AVRO would appear to be superfluous in these low cost times. If AVRO make a profit it will be on heavily discounted Monarch tickets, which is 99% of their business. And if the AVRO ticket sales are heavily discounted that accounts for part of the Monarch losses. The same principle applies to Cosmos. If their fairly small IT programme is profitable it can only be ‘cos they get heavily discounted flight tickets from Monarch and thus contribute to Monarch’s losses. Ah yes, the Engineering Company, you may point out. OK profitable but on whose back? My bet is that Monarch would have much cheaper servicing if it was allowed to go to the open market instead of paying higher than average costs to their in house engineering company, so again another house company sucking dry the airline. Without doubt other airlines pay less going elsewhere and still manage better time keeping than Monarch.
If Monarch have 400+ pilots in employment at the moment and only 32 aircraft, then they are over crewed and especially so if next year they won’t have any Long Haul. With 400+ pilots Monarch have enough to fly 40 aircraft on short haul, which is eight more aircraft than they now have. Considering that by the end of summer 2014 they will be retiring 3 B757s and 4 A300s, they have time enough to see how next summer works out before taking any new pilots now. If they take on 100 new pilots for next summer, as mentioned here, what are these guys going to be flying and how many hours every month. As admitted earlier in this forum, a MON pilot says that they only fly 40 to 60 hours per month......, which seems to hold up the theory that they are presently over crewed and have enough crews even for next year’s folly.
Never mind chaps if you get a job with Monarch you can rely on strong BALPA union representation, only problem is that those first in are the last out at the first sign of any redundancies and the reverse situation for the new entrants, last in are first out, so don’t burn any boats and put wax in your ears or tie yourselves to the main mast of the ship before setting sail in the open sea.....the sirens’ call is not all it’s made out to be.....
Monarch deserves better management than they have at present and they deserve to be profitable and thrive but the business can never thrive on losses, refinancing and reckless expansion into the unknown.
If there are any responses to my comments above, it would be appreciated if they were offered with facts and figures and not a simple “rubbish” statement. Thanks. Most of the information here can be found in previous posts in various forums.
Well nearly, ‘cos we now find out that they sold their two Airbus 330s to a lessor and contracted to lease them back. Since the two aircraft in question are only 13 years old, the deal must have been worth many millions, so multimillionaire Swiss owner Sergio M didn’t have to dig into his pockets too deeply to “refinance” Monarch. Nevertheless important assets have now been sold and the company is worth that much less and is that much more vulnerable if the extraordinary expansion plans don’t work out in the present and near future adverse financial panorama.
Swiss owner Sergio M installed his son Fabio M at the helm of Monarch some time back and it would appear he has been totally incapable of stemming the haemorrhaging. Of course the real culprits have been the previous management teams and marketing departments but if you are losing 4 million every month, even if you have deep pockets or you didn’t have to earn the money in the first place, you take some actions to mitigate the problem, specially if you stand to lose the money yourself and your close family
Anyway no problem Fabio M has lots of money now and we know that the charter business was not profitable, so we abandon that side of the business. Long haul isn’t profitable either, as most of it is charter and Cosmos cannot sell long haul, so we pull out of that too. The great commercial plan for the future is to go loco/schedule, open new bases, with new and standard routes and do it very quickly before anyone realizes what we are doing, not even the customers! Never have done before but now we have the cash mountain, let’s advertise, as the general public won’t be able to resist us, as soon as they know what we have to offer! We have nothing different to offer from the rest but we ARE Monarch!
Quick expansion did you say? Ah well, yes we have 400+ pilots and yes they only fly 40 to 60 hours a month but we only have 32 hulls and cannot meet our commitments at the moment without incurring our passengers in long delays, even though we have the best engineering company in the UK. OK we open two new bases this year at BHX and EMA and try and poach customers from BMIbaby, with whom no one will want to fly, as they are closing down. We lease 4 hulls from other airlines to do the job until October and we get our foot in the door, expensive deal but we’ll pull thru’....hopefully. All this regardless of the fact that BMIbaby would have cleaned up the majority of would be customers for July, August and September, leaving the dregs to Monarch for the period 11 September to the end of October. If BMI baby routes were such a good bet, why didn’t Monarch buy or partially buy the company? BA would have jumped at any deal and save some jobs, probably better than the total shutdown anyway.
The best one is the proposed base at LBA but enough has been said on that one previously. Just one comment, which is that Monarch will be competing with JET2 on their home base with their leased aircraft against JET2’s wholly owned aircraft, which are fully refurbished+new seats. Any bets on the winner?
Well they have the support of two profitable travel companies namely AVRO and COSMOS, you may say. There was some years ago a reason for AVRO as a flight seat selling agent to the travel trade, when charter flights were the norm and we lived in a totally different travel business environment, but nowadays AVRO would appear to be superfluous in these low cost times. If AVRO make a profit it will be on heavily discounted Monarch tickets, which is 99% of their business. And if the AVRO ticket sales are heavily discounted that accounts for part of the Monarch losses. The same principle applies to Cosmos. If their fairly small IT programme is profitable it can only be ‘cos they get heavily discounted flight tickets from Monarch and thus contribute to Monarch’s losses. Ah yes, the Engineering Company, you may point out. OK profitable but on whose back? My bet is that Monarch would have much cheaper servicing if it was allowed to go to the open market instead of paying higher than average costs to their in house engineering company, so again another house company sucking dry the airline. Without doubt other airlines pay less going elsewhere and still manage better time keeping than Monarch.
If Monarch have 400+ pilots in employment at the moment and only 32 aircraft, then they are over crewed and especially so if next year they won’t have any Long Haul. With 400+ pilots Monarch have enough to fly 40 aircraft on short haul, which is eight more aircraft than they now have. Considering that by the end of summer 2014 they will be retiring 3 B757s and 4 A300s, they have time enough to see how next summer works out before taking any new pilots now. If they take on 100 new pilots for next summer, as mentioned here, what are these guys going to be flying and how many hours every month. As admitted earlier in this forum, a MON pilot says that they only fly 40 to 60 hours per month......, which seems to hold up the theory that they are presently over crewed and have enough crews even for next year’s folly.
Never mind chaps if you get a job with Monarch you can rely on strong BALPA union representation, only problem is that those first in are the last out at the first sign of any redundancies and the reverse situation for the new entrants, last in are first out, so don’t burn any boats and put wax in your ears or tie yourselves to the main mast of the ship before setting sail in the open sea.....the sirens’ call is not all it’s made out to be.....
Monarch deserves better management than they have at present and they deserve to be profitable and thrive but the business can never thrive on losses, refinancing and reckless expansion into the unknown.
If there are any responses to my comments above, it would be appreciated if they were offered with facts and figures and not a simple “rubbish” statement. Thanks. Most of the information here can be found in previous posts in various forums.
Last edited by DjerbaDevil; 15th Jul 2012 at 20:42.
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'''a MON pilot says that they only fly 40 to 60 hours per month......, which seems to hold up the theory that they are presently over crewed and have enough crews even for next year’s folly'''
40-60 hrs............if only............granted thats true for us guys on 50% though
Overcrewed, I'll tell crewing in the morning, I'll let you know what they say.............after they've picked themselves up from rolling around the floor laughing
40-60 hrs............if only............granted thats true for us guys on 50% though
Overcrewed, I'll tell crewing in the morning, I'll let you know what they say.............after they've picked themselves up from rolling around the floor laughing
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40-60 hours a month??? News to me, I've been running at 90+ for the last 3 months and there is overtime galore available.
Maybe on the 757, but that figure is the exception.
I cannot argue with any of the facts and figures above, in fact Im sure it must have taken Djerba hours to collect them, however the nature of how Monarch works would suggest you cannot hang your hat on them either. To fully appreciate Monarchs performance, you would have to look at the group as a whole. I don't know the figures, but I'd bet they wouldn't paint as negative a picture as Djerba suggests.
Maybe on the 757, but that figure is the exception.
I cannot argue with any of the facts and figures above, in fact Im sure it must have taken Djerba hours to collect them, however the nature of how Monarch works would suggest you cannot hang your hat on them either. To fully appreciate Monarchs performance, you would have to look at the group as a whole. I don't know the figures, but I'd bet they wouldn't paint as negative a picture as Djerba suggests.
Last edited by MaxPower2011; 15th Jul 2012 at 23:00.
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DD I have said it once and I will say it again, utter rubbish. I don't have to spend hours scouring the web to try and build a picture of what's happening in Monarch, I see it every day. Your posting is wrong in many areas which tells me you obviously don't work for us thank god. I will not go into all points as I have a life, a girl, 
and too little time for self abuse. A few points to think about, we are not opening a base at BHX this year I think you will find we have been there for a while. But if you pull it up on one of your searches on a cold lonely night then please let us know. The best one though is your monkey maths regarding crewing levels. What was it again, 400+ pilots / 32 aircraft(WRONG 34) = how many hours per pilot. Our cc spends hundreds of hours of their time trying to work out and negotiate with ops our crewing levels on a daily basis as the goalposts are constantly changing. I will give you a hint, what about pilots who train on the ground, what about pilots who spend time out of the cockpit in Luton on cc business, safety officers, medical advisors......how about female pilots on maternity, long term sick........and so on. But oh no, you spend a few minutes on google and hey presto a bloody expert is born. Our reasons for moving into Leeds and East Mids are what again? What, we are going to try and get extra pax to fly with us, how dare us. I'm not going to slag Jet 2 off but some of their pax will try us and if we get it right they will fly with us again and the same goes for Jet 2. Neither of us can tell what will happen......hold on, sorry I forgot my place...I can't tell what will happen but it sure feels good to be part of a company that's taking a shot at the title...
A few more lonely hours needed on the Internet for these guys me thinks....
and too little time for self abuse. A few points to think about, we are not opening a base at BHX this year I think you will find we have been there for a while. But if you pull it up on one of your searches on a cold lonely night then please let us know. The best one though is your monkey maths regarding crewing levels. What was it again, 400+ pilots / 32 aircraft(WRONG 34) = how many hours per pilot. Our cc spends hundreds of hours of their time trying to work out and negotiate with ops our crewing levels on a daily basis as the goalposts are constantly changing. I will give you a hint, what about pilots who train on the ground, what about pilots who spend time out of the cockpit in Luton on cc business, safety officers, medical advisors......how about female pilots on maternity, long term sick........and so on. But oh no, you spend a few minutes on google and hey presto a bloody expert is born. Our reasons for moving into Leeds and East Mids are what again? What, we are going to try and get extra pax to fly with us, how dare us. I'm not going to slag Jet 2 off but some of their pax will try us and if we get it right they will fly with us again and the same goes for Jet 2. Neither of us can tell what will happen......hold on, sorry I forgot my place...I can't tell what will happen but it sure feels good to be part of a company that's taking a shot at the title...A few more lonely hours needed on the Internet for these guys me thinks....
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Monarch deserves better management than they have at present and they deserve to be profitable and thrive but the business can never thrive on losses, refinancing and reckless expansion into the unknown.
All this sounds very FR like in it's bashing. Smells of an O'Leary stitch up to me!
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I've worked for a couple of none aviation employers in the past that underwent expansion on a similar scale to Monarch. They just didn't have the resources to manage the expansion in enough detail and expanded into markets that were not profitable. When economic circumstances caused those markets to reduce in size they downsized, reducing staff on a grand scale.
If, I was offered the job, I'd probably take it. However I'd do it on the basis that I'd have a 50/50 chance of being fired within 2 years and wouldn't pin a mortage or anything like that around a job at Monarch. If it worked out though, it could be nice, but to start thinking about time to command and that kind of stuff is premature.
My gut feeling about Monarch is that they need to downsize and concentrate on improving margins, not expanding to increase revenue. So, good luck to those that get the jobs, but for goodness sake, go in with your eyes open, understand how risky the expansion is and have a plan B if it goes pear shaped.
If, I was offered the job, I'd probably take it. However I'd do it on the basis that I'd have a 50/50 chance of being fired within 2 years and wouldn't pin a mortage or anything like that around a job at Monarch. If it worked out though, it could be nice, but to start thinking about time to command and that kind of stuff is premature.
My gut feeling about Monarch is that they need to downsize and concentrate on improving margins, not expanding to increase revenue. So, good luck to those that get the jobs, but for goodness sake, go in with your eyes open, understand how risky the expansion is and have a plan B if it goes pear shaped.
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Guys, if you look at the posting history of the ones that have gone on a bit of a tirade above you'll see that they have some kind of vendetta towards the company, lord knows why...
Yes Monarch isn't perfect, find me an airline that is, but to trot out all this guff about have heads buried in the sand is unfounded.
Yes Monarch isn't perfect, find me an airline that is, but to trot out all this guff about have heads buried in the sand is unfounded.
Having retired from the airline scene in 1997 I no longer have any contacts in Monarch and no axe to grind, but I can see a worrying similarity with the failure of Air Europe in 1991. AE focussed on extending their short haul scheduled network during a recession and expanded when everyone else was cutting back. To the very end new pilots were being recruited to crew the shiny new aircraft on order. Then along came the long run up to Gulf War One, passengers stopped flying, the money ran out and the rest is history.
Anyone with a full time contract working for a successful LCC, however dissatisfied, should think very carefully about the consequences of being unemployed in these troubled times.
I hope I'm wrong and Monarch's shift to scheduled services is successful.
Anyone with a full time contract working for a successful LCC, however dissatisfied, should think very carefully about the consequences of being unemployed in these troubled times.
I hope I'm wrong and Monarch's shift to scheduled services is successful.
Last edited by brakedwell; 16th Jul 2012 at 13:24.
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Guys, if you look at the posting history of the ones that have gone on a bit of a tirade above you'll see that they have some kind of vendetta towards the company, lord knows why...
Yes Monarch isn't perfect, find me an airline that is, but to trot out all this guff about have heads buried in the sand is unfounded.
Yes Monarch isn't perfect, find me an airline that is, but to trot out all this guff about have heads buried in the sand is unfounded.
