FYFE THE KNIFE SLAUGHTERS MORE JOBS

Rob Fyfe, that loony bike to work, pseudo greenie CEO of Air NZ who conducts daily touchy-touchy, feely-feely management meetings with all his followers sitting in bean bags around a coffee table is at it again. He is knifing several hundred jobs in answer to the downturn in business. I wonder if this is a ruse to transfer more jobs to Asia or is it as I have previously predicted part of a bigger plan to become the first virtual airline? Many years ago I laid claim that the best thing that could happen to Air NZ is if it were taken over by its Australian competitor, Qantas. I went quiet on the idea because the soon to retire Qantas CEO, Geoff Dixon, started tampering with the culture of the “Flying Kangaroo” with grand designs to sell it off to a greedy private equity firm, all the while personally pocketing nearly $100 million for sending his employer down the garden path to certain bankruptcy . With him out of the way and the Qantas stock register solid as a rock, if I were the newly elected N.Z. Prime Minister, John Keys, I would just handover Air NZ, lock, stock and barrel to Qantas in return for a share of the action.

It is obvious that this small multi-cultural, left leaning country has little ability in effectively governing and protecting its peoples, let alone control assets which clearly should be in the hands of private enterprise experts. Fyfe and his band of followers are just not capable of steering this once proud and very profitable airline through this recession. Unlike Australia, N.Z. lost its identity as a nation decades ago. It no longer needs a flag carrier. That’s what socialism does. Apart from pandering to the native Maoris, Kiwis have watched their country slide into oblivion by successive governments heavily investing in mediocrity. Each year more New Zealanders (all skilled) leave the country never to return than the compensating flow of arriving immigrant Chinese to take their place. Not one local industrial company has its manufacturing base left in N.Z. It is a sad and sorry tale.

Yes, Air N.Z. is waiting for its leased 787 aircraft to roll off the Boeing assembly lines, but in the meantime the average age of its gas guzzling fleet approaches twenty years. It has sent most of its highly trained engineering staff down the road, cabin crew demographics have changed from Kiwis to mainland Chinese and aircraft whenever possible are serviced there. In spite of making all these savings and in light of the collapse of oil prices, Fyfe still needs to apply more surgery. Air NZ has been a penny stock ever since the meltdown over the takeover of the now defunct Ansett Airlines of Australia eight years ago and is now 85% owned by the government. Do us a favor, Fyfe, move on, but before doing so plead with the incoming administration that Air NZ is better off folded into Qantas than remaining an entity of its own. Hack-slashing jobs, only creates more misery and in your case does little to help the bottom line.

Tags: 787, AirNewZealand, Ansett Airlines, Boeing, China, Flying Kangaroo, Geoff Dixon, John Keys, Maori, New Zealand, Qantas, Rob Fyfe