Here and There.....Snippets from sea, air and land.

CRUISING:(And the question of a good value ethos)

-Royal Caribbean Lines' Chairman and CEO (The USA is less concerned about the separation of these 2 roles than is the UK) Richard D. Fein in an interview with Carol Lewis of the Times has expressed the view: "Frankly, I think we offer too good value today.I would rather be offering less value". This is very different from saying that the company needs to keep doing what it is doing but more efficiently and thereby at lower cost. We understand though where he is coming from. In theory that's fair enough. Every £ or $ unnecessarily spent is one less for the pockets of the shareholders. Particularly to the blinkered type of accountant this is a wasteful and "not good business". These good folk though never see the £ and $ that companys don't get.There are no statistics or graphs about that. Nobody loses their bonuses over the invisible customers who see "thrifting", don't like it and drift away .A minority but profitably significant element of the cruise market is long standing and brand loyal and notices any erosion of what they see as "their " product. Far more worrying though is the fact that if the CEO is known to be keen to give the customers less a cynicism creeps in. Passengers/customers become "punters" and something to be humoured rather than embraced.A corrosive culture easily takes root amongst staff. Just ask some of the legacy airlines about it.

Mr Fein might do well to think more about what he is saying, where it might lead and what it might cost.

AIRLINES:

-Boeing 787. ANA's first ever Boeing 787 commercial flight from Tokyo to Hong Kong on 26th October was well but not overwhelmingly applauded. The fact is that this is a workhorse not a spectacular "wow" new aircraft with staircases and waterfalls like the A380. It is simply a carbon fibre replacement for the unglamorous 767. It is not huge and for the man or woman in 24E it isn't very different from what has gone before. The much vaunted larger windows don't give an uninterrupted view past the maybe generously endowed people in the way. This is not a Viscount or Vanguard where the knees of those inside could be seen by those outside. The windows are a bit bigger but not enormous. The cabin has a nicely shaped ceiling but we've seen some of those before and even the early Boeing 707s had a sort of starry light effect along the cabin sides beneath the hatracks. Forgetting the green wash option, mood lighting can be nice but it doesn't improve feelings in the back of the bus after 12 or so hours aloft and real additional legroom there isn't. Maybe ANA were mistaken to show off a short haul version of the aircraft with short(er) haul cabins and seating on a longish 4 hours plus sector. For whatever reason ,nobody seems to have come running off shouting "Eureka". Sitting in a plastic rather than metal tube again doesn't mean anything much to seat 24E. This is no disrespect to Boeing in producing what is a real step forward in design, construction materials and economics. Any mistake has probably just been in the type rather than amount of hype.

One other thought. Who has the master control for darkening the windows? The man in 24 A, or B or C or D....or the cabin crew? If the latter, the battle to watch in daylight some of the world's most spectacular views versus the cabin crew's determination to minimise service demands by insisting that the blinds be down "So people can see the IFE screens" is about to move to another level. There could be a lot more air rage about.


-Virgin America:On 21st December Virgin America's flight attendants rejected representation by the Transport Workers Union. 547 voted and of these 324 or 59% voted against and 233 or 41% voted for leaving the rejected union to lick its wounds. Having during the staff wooing stage said that relationship between unions and managments need not necessarily be confrontational, the union quickly dropped the mask and accused the company of pressurising staff to vote "No".
In general unionisation and service businesses, airlines in particular, are not a happy mix. Cultural work ethic is another factor but the often deadening effect of unions on initiative and "going the extra mile" is significant. The tighter and more specific the contracts the worse the attitude to providing service and the more loaded and meaningful that dreadful statement beloved of some legacy airlines staff,-especially American ones,- "We are here primarily for your safety". Virgin America will be happy to have escaped this problem,- at least for now.

UK RAILWAYS:

The gloom at Canadian-owned Bombardier UK's Derby factory since losing the Thameslink contract to Germany's Siemens fairly and squarely under the bidding terms imposed by Gordon Brown's late government has been alleviated by a new £188 million contract for 130 electric coaches for UK's Southern Rail. Entirely coincidentally these will amongst other things relieve commuter over crowding in Transport Secretary, Justine Greening's Barnes constituency. The deal will probably secure about 1,400 Derby jobs for a year. To the unions for whom no price is too high to save their membership numbers and fees the shot in the arm is inevitably too little too late whatever the simple sums say.

Strategically the contract gives Bombardier the opportunity to quickly get its act together on some other possible UK contracts and for the parent company to consider putting some export business into its UK plant. It also needs to put some recent quality issues behind it. Deliveries of new London Metropolitan underground trains have been halted due to quality issues. Other recent deliveries of diesel Turbostar units to London Overground and Chiltern Railways have also been late and had build problems. Siemens on the other hand has had a good record of on time deliveries and their high quality products working straight from the box. In the terms of the wonderfully simple and sensible Scottish legal maxim: "Res ipsa loquitur" (The thing speaks for itself).