spreadsheet

Why was the Florida from Hamilton route cancelled?

Without wide-body growth there won't be much 737 growth.

They were also being sold as a full business class fare, people expected a full business class product.

Profit share was a bit on the huge side this quarter.

Compare the CFO pay between the two organizations, if I could get that kind of raise I'd be tempted to move as well!

The biggest cost for checked baggage isn’t fuel, it’s the handling costs. I found a Wall Street Journal article from a few years back the calculated the average cost of moving a checked bag. They estimated the average checked bag is handled by 10 people with an estimated cost of $9 per bag. Add to that the airport infrastructure costs and costs of lost/damaged baggage and you can add an additional $4 per bag. Then the fuel costs came in at about $2 per bag. So theoretically it costs about $15 to move a checked bag, or in reverse it would save $15 for each bag not brought. I realize this isn’t a linear relationship and would be a step function to truly remove the costs, but if enough bags are not checked these savings would start to add up and even for those bags moved to carry-on I would imagine the savings could significantly outweigh the costs of carry-on (delays, bin damage). The additional aspect from less checked baggage is the increased ability for cargo revenue, which in my opinion is what a checked bag cost should really be compared with.

I can’t tell if you’re being facetious or not. That is exactly what the ULCC’s such as Ryanair, Spirit and Allegiant are doing (and what Canada Jetlines and Jet Naked propose to do), keep the fare as low as possible so they come up unbelievably low compared to others and theoretically stimulate more traffic. They never want to raise fares to keep the traffic coming so they have to increase revenue from ancillary areas - so people may end up paying more than a ticket with another airline but for the average consumer it’s next to impossible to compare everything between airlines before flying. People claim they hate this and want things like baggage included in the fare, yet the ULCC’s have record load factors and the highest margins in the industry. WestJet and AC both offer fares where things like baggage are included, but really nothing trumps the fare price for the bulk of the public.

Was just reading the new Freakonomics book this weekend and they had an interesting section about these types of scams. To most of us when we look at the overall premise it’s bad enough, but then to add on the spelling mistakes and outlandish sums of money makes seem so outrageous we wonder who in their right mind would fall for it. Apparently that’s part of their plan, if it sounds halfway reasonable they will suck in a lot more people who will eventually fall away through the scam as more details come to light. If you’re gullible enough to buy into it even with how outlandish it seems they will have a much higher close rate with you and don’t waste their time on people they won’t end up getting money out of.

I was in favour of all the things listed by SERTE that I was around for and probably would be on first bag as well. One thing I didn't support was Sabre from the costs it would bring and that was without realizing what a nightmare implementation would be. That being said its hard to argue with the additional revenue it has supplied and in hind sight I was wrong about it. I can understand why people are resistant to change, especially on the front line. But I can honestly say that the leadership is concerned about the future and actively pursuing strategies to ensure the long term viability of the company, sitting still at this point would deadly.

It doesn't get much traction because things like flights for sick kids are relatively common. Of course it's more important to send a dying child to Disneyland than for someone to get a new TV, but this was something different. Dog bites man isn't news, man bites dog is. Just because it isn't true charity as we expect it to be and we all know it was mainly for publicity, it doesn't take away from the fact that it was a really well done surprise that brings a lot of joy and the spirit of giving into people's lives. It isn't about the stuff, it was the way it was done and seeing the excitement and joy from the people which can be passed on to the millions of viewers. I'm absolutely dumbfounded that anyone can find negativity in this, especially from airline folks that know how much true charitable acts are performed yearly from our organizations without looking for publicity - the way it should be done.

I'm curious, are WestJet Pilots actually paid less than median? If so and you want to increase base salaries are you willing to see decreases to the extremely generous ESP program or options? Something tells me you wouldn't embrace that change.

Very interesting. I'll admit I was part of the problem, and to a large degree still am, price is my number one focus. Heck, when I go out to eat I start with the price and the look to the left to see if I'd be satisfied with the food. But I definitely learned a lesson about the importance of quality. We built a house a while ago and while we didn't go with the cheapest appliances available, we didn't exactly splurge on the GE ones we got. Within 4 years we'd had a problem with every single one of them, in fact we paid more in multiple repairs on the stove than a new one would have cost. Needless to say I will never buy GE again and when we picked out the appliances for the house we just built we looked for quality, not price. My sister moved into her newly built house 3 months ago and has already had a problem with her appliances. Not surprisingly her builder installed GE appliances.

I see AC and WestJet saying they'd want access to the island for their jets if Porter is granted access, but I don't see anywhere where they've showed interest in the C series. Where did you see that?

Plus it's $100m over three years, not per year.

I think we all know you need to take what your read in the newspaper with a grain of salt. I worked on a project this summer looking at all the costs of the organization and each group was tasked with coming up with cost saving initiatives. Since a very large proportion of the increased costs are due to the workforce maturing through the bands many of the initiatives were aimed at employees. I can tell you I was disappointed in the results as Gregg specifically did not want to take on the ideas that would lower employee compensation, he wanted to find other areas for savings as well as focus on employee efficiency. I can tell you there are areas where the sick time is at ridiculous levels, that’s the kind of things Gregg is interested in fixing. I find the low cost culture from when I started has been slowly replaced by an entitlement culture and it scares me. It’s natural as the young workforce has aged and gone through life events like marriage and kids to want more compensation and benefits, but nothing will kill this company faster than replacing ‘how can we succeed’ with ‘what’s in it for me’. I think the pilot agreement coming up will be very telling of how this company is going to move into the future, and if it continues to go down the path of what’s in it for me, I may have to ask myself the same question as a lot of my coworkers will. If I’m going to work for a ‘what’s in it for me’ company I might as well go work in oil for a lot more money. I literally took a 39% pay cut from big oil to come work for WestJet, and most of my coworkers took significant pay cuts as well because we were excited to be part of this company, I sure hope that doesn’t change.