ETIHAD WOES BLAMED FOR LETTING AIR SEYCHELLES DOWN
(Posted 29th March 2018)
Feedback coming in from the Seychelles suggest a foul mood over the level of redundancies announced late yesterday at national airline Air Seychelles.
174 staff will be sent home while a further 28 vacant posts previously advertised will now no longer be filled.
Regular sources, wishing to remain unnamed, have suggested that the financial woes at partner airline Etihad are responsible for the sudden downturn of fortunes, after the airline not just made profits in recent years but also collected awards and accolades, being named a 4 star airline by Skytrax.
Etihad’s strategic overreach and obvious failure to contain their loss making (ad)ventures with Air Berlin and Alitalia not only cost the former CEO his job – who walked out of his offices with a rich severance package – but is now spreading to innocent victim Air Seychelles, where the 174 affected will get little more than regulation severance, a pittance in comparison to those thought at the root of the problem.
Suggestions have gone as far as suggesting a well near conspiracy to let French airline JOON take over the Paris to Mahe route, which Air Seychelles successfully wrestled back from Etihad, cutting out the layover in Abu Dhabi which had upset and in part driven away passengers from France.
Said one regular source: ‘It now looks like someone in Etihad pulled the wool over our government officials head about the Paris route. When the direct flights from Mahe to Paris stop, the main beneficiary will be Etihad because they will then fly that traffic from Abu Dhabi to France. How anyone could have in his right mind granted landing rights to JOON on the same days as Air Seychelles was flying, now smells not only like a conspiracy against our national airline but if not that outright incompetence. France was well served with three weekly flights and ceding the route to a French low cost airline instead of flying the Creole Spirit to and from Paris is turning out to be a national disaster not unlike the government’s attempt to turn Assumption Island into a naval base for India. If Etihad had been more prudent in seeking partners in Europe, where they lost billions of Dollars, Air Seychelles could continue to prosper and not be turned from pride to shame. The brutal cutting of routes and the phasing out of the wide body fleet looks like it is a repeat of the Bram Steller fiasco who wanted to emasculate the airline and turn it into a one aircraft operator. This entire scenario will be heading to the national assembly and I hope they show the same guts like they did with Assumption Island where they said the deal is dead in the water and whatever agreement was made will not be ratified‘.
Similar sentiments were voiced to this correspondent from other sources too, every single one denouncing the decisions which led to the national airline being subjected to such drastic measures which apparently also includes the selling off of a DHC Twin Otter aircraft used on domestic services. ‘Those responsible at Etihad walked off scot free. Their entire business strategy was based on outdoing Emirates and they failed miserably. Now, their failures causes a backlash for our own national airline and that is simply not acceptable‘.
It is also understood that a government statement in parliament was rejected by all parties earlier in the week and summons issued for the responsible minister to return to the house with an alternative plan of action.
