Quote:
Originally Posted by whatnext
A classic example of when not hiring Canadian backfires on you. When your CEO is from a postage stamp-sized country without domestic flights lasting hours they underestimate how much this would piss Canadians off. Add to that it completely muddied Westjet's brand proposition.
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I don’t think the problem is that he isn’t raised here.
Strategic direction is the CEO’s job. He has talked about wanting to focus on leisure traffic, and seeing that as where the market is going. And wants to have an ‘insurmountable’ cost advantage to his competitors.
The problem with that is:
1. Westjet serves more than just leisure passengers. If be was getting out of serving non-leisure, that’s a problem for Canadians. And for WestJet, since it is a significant part of their customers. That’s a sort of closed-minded viewpoint - a CEO has to see more than one strategy.
2. It is true that the lowest cost player tends to be the most profitable, and to be the last one standing. But racing to be first to the bottom carries a cost in customer goodwill. And that cost is real, even if not accounted for in CASM.
3. The old Westjet was low-cost. But it was also focused on what people wanted. And on service. Maybe not hot meals, but getting the basics. The mindset of cost control does not seem to be asking “what do customers need?”
Lack of a regional strategy seems to be an issue, IMO, but regional ops are out of industry favour these days. And with reason. I still think they are core to serving customer needs.
Bottom line - his vision of what the company can be, and what it is, and how to go from one to the other seem at odds, which is not a good sign.
There definitely was a potential lost opportunity on the 787, although exactly what it could or should be, I don’t know. I hope it doesn’t unfold like this, but it would be ironic if reordering the 787’s also proves a mistake due to Alaska’s SEA operation taking hold of that part of the market by that point…
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