Standing room only - on Ryanair?

The undisputed kings of publicity are at it again.  The Telegraph is reporting a story in the Sun (an interesting decision in itself) that Ryanair is considering offering standing room options rather than seats on some of its flights.  Apparently it can increase the passenger capacity by up to 50% and reduce costs (unit costs per passenger?) by 20% by doing this.  A good example to use with students who might want to consider the +’s and -’s from various business perspectives…

U2 on Tour - Investment appraisal and capacity utilisation rolled into one!

A fantastic example of investment appraisal and capacity utilisation in this article in the Guardian, which describes the risks and returns of the new U2 tour.

Flexible unemployment

BT is following the lead of several other employers in an attempt to find ways to keep staff on the books even though they are not needed during the downturn. Their creative solution is to ‘lend’ their staff to competitors rather than make them redundant. This is part of a much wider cost cutting scheme, and involves offering ‘placements’ outside the company, initially on a voluntary basis, but BT have not ruled out making them compulsory if too few people volunteer. While the new company would pay their salary, staff remain members of the BT pension scheme. The scheme seems to mirror the way that a Premiership football club will lend players to other clubs for all or part of the season as part if the player’s ‘career development’ – the new club pays the wage, but there is an understanding that the player is expected to return to the ‘parent’ club at the end of the period.

Rated: (5/5), based on 8 reviews

Ripple effects of a brutal outlook for the car industry

The global lack of demand for new cars was brought home to my Business Studies pupils last week when we heard that our annual visit to the Jaguar car factory in the Midlands had to be cancelled due to an unscheduled plant shutdown for the second half of January.