Curlyjock,
Whilst the crews performance makes up quite a large part of the passengers in flight experiance, you will see from many forums that their performance has not been to the level that the passengers have expected. This cannot be blamed on the salary, but down to the individual crew members and their own attitude. There are, indeed many crew members who have performed their jobs with aplomb and have been praised for such, regardless of any pay dispute, but there is a minority that, if you paid them £40,000 a year would still provide rubbish service.
This problem needs to be addressed by strong management, who have let this happen.
As for the statement that its not the product but the crew, that is plainly wrong.
Virgin have to keep the premium passengers, the businessmen and women flying with them, paying the £3,000-£4,000 per trip, this has been acheived by the best in the world Clubhouses, the limo services and the UC cabin.
In the day of tightening the belts, Virgin have increased their PE passenger rate by again, providing better seating and better food/Ameinity kits.
The crew whilst palying their part are not the reason many people fly with Virgin, it may have been so whe the company was a small airline flying quirky flights fresh and interesting flights, but Virgin has gone "middle aged" and people expect more than seat back TV's today.
The main complaints against the comapny are (and in no particular order)
a) On time performance
b) Awful Economy seat pitch
c) Awful food across the cabins
d) Terrible service in Economy, with crew dissapearing for hours and no ability to get a drink.
e) On the B & s routes "old" aircraft with worse than Charter IFE
These are the areas that Virgin need to address, and paying more than 4.8% to cabin crew is not going to sort these out in any way shape or form.
They have to spend money on training, on new cabins, on new planes and new IFE just to survive in this market, let alone when open skies comes along.
Whilst many people will support more money for Cabin crew, they would support more money for all employees in this country, but the fact is that in this global economy, many are getting no pay rise whatsoever, or only rate of inflation, on salaries less tyhan Cabin crew and it is seen to be greedy to want more than 4.8%. Crew reductions on aircraft, many, many businesses have reduced their staffing levels to compete with companies outside the UK and many Local Government workers are seeing staff reductions to keep Council taxes down.
These people have possibly to save for two years to go to Florida for example, and to see CC offered 4.8% and then threaten to destory their hard worked for hyoliday really grates them.
Personally I feel the CC should accept this offer and build upon it in future negotiations.
They are still in a better position than many CC at Globespan, TCA, FCA and the rest of the airlines downsizing. they have a job to go to.
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