If the recent changes made by Virgin Blue Airlines are any indication of what lies ahead, it will be a rough transition for them. Since John Borghetti took over the helm the airline has initiated a lot of changes in an attempt to move away from a budget based airline and move towards a business class airline. Borghetti has said that the transition will be in stages over the next 10-12 months and not all at once. The first change was to drop the Blue from the name, which has been synonymous with budget airlines. At first he was considering trading the Virgin name for something else entirely but recently has decided to stick with Virgin. The initial steps in the re-branding strategy include upgrading airport lounges, adding business class seats, adding more wide body aircraft for longer flights, revamping in-air food services and an entirely redesigned uniform.
The redesigned uniform project was undertaken by famous super model Elle Macpherson and Project Runways Juli Grbac. The goal was to design a uniform that is attractive and brings the glamour back into commercial jet travel. They were going for something closely akin to the Pan-Am uniforms, which at one time if you were wearing this you were treated almost like a celebrity. The uniforms looked nice in their initial debut but shortly after employees starting wearing them the complaints started to fly in. So many so that the Civil Aviation Safety Authority has received at least 4 formal complaints about the uniforms.
The complaints state the uniforms are ill fitting, cause rashes, and are highly flammable. Employees state that while wearing the uniform they are unable to raise their arms above their shoulders, which poses a serious safety issue in the event of an emergency. The employees also say that when designing the uniforms they only took the look into consideration and didn’t care about comfort or safety. This seems to be a problem that needs immediate attention and is not helping the Virgin re-branding effort.
Virgin Airlines recently announced a fare increase along with the increase in fuel surcharges as a result of the recent surge in fuel prices. This couldn’t come at a worse time, as they are trying to get through the pains of making major changes to their organization. There has also been a lot of publicity about the recent lawsuit against Virgin that was filed by two employees who are claiming discrimination because of issues with maternity leave. And who can forget the incident with the baby being put into the overhead luggage compartment.
All of this adds up to a ton of publicity for the airline, the only problem is that it’s the wrong type of publicity. With any luck they can put this behind them, but they are faced with a lot of problems at once which is hard to overcome. With the unstable economy we are currently faced with a slew of problems such as this can be disastrous, but we will see what the future holds.
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