Will VA sack staff?

[Melburnian1]

We previously discussed a VA loss a year ago:

http://www.australianfrequentflyer....ocity/vas-latest-loss-hardly-worth-67780.html

The latest notification of upcoming poor results at VA begs the question: will it sack staff?

It is reducing flights and selling some smaller aircraft. This must mean that some technical and cabin crew are more often 'on reserve' if that is the correct term to use. There cannot be sufficient work to gainfully employ every member of staff for full hours every month, and on top of that if I recall the Oz - AUH VA metal route has been temporarily suspended and TT have taken over some flights to Indonesia from VA.

Natural attrition occurs in any business but may be fairly low at VA (although cabin crew may have a higher separation rate per annum than pilots.) Will VA be forced by its unusually composed Board (EY, SQ and until recently NZ are or were represented) or shareholders (including minority) to initiate forced redundancies?

And how likely it is that JB (CEO) will get the flick? He is low profile and seems a lovely man, lacking the huge ego of a competitor, but VA has been promising a turnaround for six years or so that has not occurred. That's not to dispute that some great changes have not been made, such as terrific A332s internally for Oz east coast - Perth routes, but I am merely referring to the lack of a satisfactory return on employed capital.

Subject to foreign ownership and limitations, one could see SQ swooping with a takeover bid or some other mechanism to achieve full ownership if the VA share price dropped much further.

 

[williamsf1]

We previously discussed a VA loss a year ago:

http://www.australianfrequentflyer....ocity/vas-latest-loss-hardly-worth-67780.html

The latest notification of upcoming poor results at VA begs the question: will it sack staff?

It is reducing flights and selling some smaller aircraft. This must mean that some technical and cabin crew are more often 'on reserve' if that is the correct term to use. There cannot be sufficient work to gainfully employ every member of staff for full hours every month, and on top of that if I recall the Oz - AUH VA metal route has been temporarily suspended and TT have taken over some flights to Indonesia from VA.

Natural attrition occurs in any business but may be fairly low at VA (although cabin crew may have a higher separation rate per annum than pilots.) Will VA be forced by its unusually composed Board (EY, SQ and until recently NZ are or were represented) or shareholders (including minority) to initiate forced redundancies?

And how likely it is that JB (CEO) will get the flick? He is low profile and seems a lovely man, lacking the huge ego of a competitor, but VA has been promising a turnaround for six years or so that has not occurred. That's not to dispute that some great changes have not been made, such as terrific A332s internally for Oz east coast - Perth routes, but I am merely referring to the lack of a satisfactory return on employed capital.

Subject to foreign ownership and limitations, one could see SQ swooping with a takeover bid or some other mechanism to achieve full ownership if the VA share price dropped much further.

It has already happened over the past few months ... some non operational departments have been cut back. They made a huge mistake a few years back letting operating crew numbers drop to a point where flights were cancelled, and they have learned their lesson there.. so they won't go to hard with numbers again. They airline industry runs in cycles and one way they can manage is via holiday use ( ie leave without paid offered or making people with large leave balances use them)

The biggest mistake JB has made was migrating to Sabre reservations when they the using a far superior system for the long haul operations and would have been a painless transition. I would conservatively estimate this has cost 500mil in the past 3 years in lost or inefficient sales . I also include customer good will in this number. I would estimate more than half the negative post re VA on AFF are directly related to this poor decision.

 

[dk4]

Will VA be forced by its unusually composed Board (EY, SQ and until recently NZ are or were represented) or shareholders (including minority) to initiate forced redundancies? And how likely it is that JB (CEO) will get the flick?

Rumour has it that "one of the reasons" Air NZ is pulling out, is because they want JB removed, and that view wasn't supported at a board level.

 

[Melburnian1]

Interesting contributions - thank you both. Williamsf1, is the Sabre booking system merely coughbersome and slow or is it relatively poor at predicting at what price VA can optimise each seat being sold at, hence denying the airline revenue by poorer than ought be the case revenue? Or does it incorrectly show seats as 'sold' when in fact they have not been, hence risking prospective passengers instead using competitors?