Airlines in a Crisis

In Norway we have several examples on this. Norwegian was/is hq'd at Fornebyu that haven't been an airport for over 20 years. Flyr was hq'd in the overexpensive Oslo city center. And Norse hq'd in Arendal, a town without an airport and even further from Oslo airport than Oslo itself. The train connections from hq to airport might be frequent and only take halve to an hour but its not the same as a 10 minute walk to oversee where your real operations happens. The place where your customers experience your service and most of your critical costs are spent. But also the costs most easily squeezable. Closenes let you reduce the costs before they occur rather than just financially overseeing the bills in accounts after they have happened. That makes a difference when it comes to reducing costs through strict control.  And low costs are the most important for being able to underprise your competitors. Something all the beforementioned airlines tried and tries because they see...

Some years back both the Chief Pilot and the Director of Engineering disappeared from the MOL's Z table. Last year the Chief Operations Officer, representing both the aforementioned and the rest of operations left and was not replaced. This spring it was the Chief Marketing Officer after for Ryanair to be a relatively few years both at the company and at the top table. One would think Wilson after so many years in Ryanair would know it's resources and could quickly find some new Chiefs. Or is the airline a bit struck by MOL's role and struggling to find its footing as a multi airline group. Should O'Leary have his Chiefs table with all the Airline CEO's plus some legal and joint services like IT. Then Eddie could create his own Z table with managment controlling all the branches of the core Ryanair airline. They must be struggling now when 75% of the staff do not have direct leadership representation at the Monday morning meeting.