flyer 1492 wrote:From what I am hearing (thru the grapevine) is out of 10 new hires starting at WJ, only 1 is coming from WJE.
Incorrect. Confirmed by WJ management that flow through has been 25% all this time. And starting may the flow through goes to 50% Read the WJ forums for more details.
dukepoint wrote:
What does "prefered airline" mean? It's a term that's used to discribe Westjet a lot in the Media and elsewhere.
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Correct. And it continues being a big dividend in why WJ is so successful. With a shrinking Jazz, will morale be as good as a growing Encore? I believe it won't.
I think we can agree that Air Canada's image has been suppressed as not caring about customers for a very long time. Just recently are they slowly starting to recover from that image. Even though I've personally had enjoyable flights on them most of the time. So when you have a certain reputation with customers, anyone under that colour will be painted with one brush. Jazz included. Add a shrinking, and painfully dying Jazz to the mix, and you will have a lot of low morale workers that probably don't enjoy working for Jazz anymore.
Morale at AC regional airlines will be low, employees will generally be pissed/short, and they won't care. This will show, and drive customers away. Where will they drive the customers? To the growing Encore that is literally blowing up the Canadian regional market as we speak. Don't believe it? Surely you've worked crappy dead-end jobs before dukepoint and understand the relationship between employee morale and customer service, and in turn customer retention? 10+ years to Mainline for a new hire on a b-scale that probably already has 10 years exp in this industry? That's definitely a dead-end job. Who knows what chess moves AC will make anyway in 10 years.
At the end of the day, consumers don't care about Jazz... EVAS... Sky Regional... Encore. They care about getting from point A to point B and being treated with respect, and have a good experience. Once there's poor morale-related experiences at Jazz, any AC consumer will change to WJ - Yes, even the business traveller. Doesn't help that WJ's frequent flier market is taking a huge up-step while Aeroplan points has become very hard to attain. A lot of business travellers are upset by this very point. Search the heralds, you'll see numerous threads on it. Who takes the blame for aeroplan related issues once again? I'll answer it for you. The AC product and in turn and indirectly, Jazz amongst the rest of the AC regionals.
The picture is bigger than this TA guys... especially when you look at it from a non-pilot perspective. The Encore product is here to stay, while the Jazz product as we know it is not. And I think Encore will succeed extremely well with Canadian travellers in the years to come. This new Jazz symphony acts as an added reason for why I think Encore will succeed as well. Because if it's been a good experience travelling on AC regionals, it's been on Jazz. So you guys have been the one saving AC's image while the SKY's/EVAS/GGN's have damaged it on a regional scale. So when you join the same race to the bottom as the rest, AC's regional flying will honestly take a huge hit. And Encore will get the traffic.
So would a new hire really thrive at Jazz? Doubt it. Encore's the way of the future in this country. Hate it, love it, shoot me for it. I speak what I believe to be a logical truth with the information that I have today.
dukepoint wrote:
What does "a mess" mean? AC has never once missed payroll. Folks can get as wrapped up in politics as they like....or not. Most just do their job, enjoy it and go home and ignore rumours/forums.
DP.
DP.
Regardless of rumours and politics and etc, if you don't agree AC's regional flying has been a mess right from the beginning, then we simply will have to agree to disagree. Respectfully of course.
Obviously all of the above minus the fact about WJ flow through is all just my opinion. I could be wrong.