新首席官要做出改变, 包括为商务客户提供联接航班服务.
一个被认为已经忘却了航空业的人已经开始学着去整顿Virgin Blue 航空公司.
36年前在Qantas的收发室开始职业生涯的John Borghetti已经判断出了他需要考虑的两个主要问题:对休闲旅客的过分依赖, 和导致丧失商务旅客的国际航线不方便的时间表.
Borghetti在成为首席官4个月后, 上周发布了他对公司考察后做的决定: 在第一阶段要着重改善国际航线和新西兰航线.
Virgin Blue戏剧性地撤掉了在新西兰国内市场运营的3条航线, Jetstar对此做出了及时反应, 将在今年年底开始增加两条航线来填补市场留出的空白.
由于10月份航线被抽走, 这将会是"让数千旅客忧虑的一天", 新西兰航空要求能和Virgin Blue一起来运送这些旅客(晕, 这句话很不通, 该如何翻译?Air NZ also offered to carry passengers "disrupted" by the October pull-out, which it described as "a concerning day for thousands of air travellers", even though Air NZ is proposing an alliance with Virgin Blue)
更大的改变是从Virgin blue 到Pacific blue的悉尼-斐济航线的转机首次可以对接悉尼-洛杉矶每日午间航班, 并可到达美国东海岸(很不通, 求救However, the greater change was the transfer of Sydney-Fiji flights from V Australia to Pacific Blue to enable the introduction of daily lunchtime flights from Sydney to Los Angeles with onward services to the US east coast for the first time.)
Borghetti说因为现在飞机到达LA的时间已经是黄昏时刻, 所以很多这个航班的旅客是去加州,包括迪士尼乐园的休闲游客.
Borghetti说:"V澳洲有很好的产品来应对这个需要美国内陆中转的商务市场, 因为一半的游客都不只是到LA. 如果有了好产品而不去挖掘这个联合交通的市场潜力那真是太浪费了."
V澳洲也将增加从Melbourne, Brisbane,Perth前往泰国普吉的航班.
他们认为普吉对欧洲市场很重要, 因为普吉可以让自助旅行者买到从欧洲到普吉的便宜机票, 来完成整段旅程.
不过, Borghetti对何时引进国内737的分隔商务舱--这个最大的变化守口如瓶. "我们只有10%的商务旅客,一旦面临廉价航空的竞争, 或者经济形势和消费能力下降, 我们会很危险."
"这是一个实际上已被Qanta垄断的市场, 我们应该争取一部分来使我们的业务多样化, 这样就不会让我们完全暴露在休闲旅客市场上了."
"我们并不是想追逐那80%的商务市场, 我们要做的是改变我们的业务结构, 争取20%的商务游客."
Business versus leisure
August 27, 2010
Changes to Virgin under its new chief include connecting flights for corporate flyers, writes Clive Dorman.
A man with a reputation for having forgotten more about the airline industry than most of his contemporaries have learnt has gone to work on fixing the Virgin Blue airlines group.
John Borghetti, who began his career in the mail room at Qantas 36 years ago, has already identified what he considers two major problems: a dangerously high reliance on leisure travellers and inconvenient scheduling of its international V Australia services that has turned off business travellers.
Four months after he became chief executive, Borghetti lastweek announced the results of "phase one" of his review of the group, which focused mainly on changes to international and New Zealand operations.
Virgin Blue's dramatic withdrawal from the three-way contest for the NZ domestic market triggered an immediate response from Jetstar, which will base two extra planes in NZ from the end of the year to fill the void. Air NZ also offered to carry passengers "disrupted" by the October pull-out, which it described as "a concerning day for thousands of air travellers", even though Air NZ is proposing an alliance with Virgin Blue.
However, the greater change was the transfer of Sydney-Fiji flights from V Australia to Pacific Blue to enable the introduction of daily lunchtime flights from Sydney to Los Angeles with onward services to the US east coast for the first time.
Because flights to LA currently don't arrive until late afternoon, Borghetti says a lot of the airline's passengers are leisure travellers destined for California, including Disneyland.
"[V Australia has] a very good product for the business market and for the business market you have to have connections to the rest of America because half the traffic from Australia goes beyond LA," Borghetti says. "So to have a product that's that good and not really exploit its potential by targeting corporate traffic is a waste."
The airline will also increase services to Phuket, Thailand, from Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth.
It regards Phuket as important for the European market because it allows independent travellers to combine cheap fares from Europe to Thailand with its own air-pass system.
However, Borghetti is tight-lipped about the timing of the airline's biggest change, the introduction of a separate business-class cabin on its domestic 737s. "Only 10 per cent of our business is corporate business so we're very exposed at that [leisure] end when you see declines in the economy or retail spending, when there's massive competition from low-cost carriers," he says.
"You've got another end of the market where Qantas has got a virtual monopoly. It makes sense for us to have a chunk of that so that it diversifies our business somewhat and it doesn't leave us totally exposed to the leisure market.
"We're not after 80 per cent of the corporate market. What we want to do is change the mix within our business. What I'm trying to get to is a situation where, say, 20 per cent of our business is corporate."
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