Paul Lewis/SINGAPORE
START-UP CARRIER Air Macau has suffered a major setback with the resignation of its chief executive David Young and two other senior managers, following a row over control and direction of the company.
Young has quit the joint venture Sino-Portuguese airline only four months after it was established in September 1994. Air Macau's nine-strong staff has been further depleted by the simultaneous departure of its newly appointed maintenance manager Dick Cross and communications manager Peter Marks.
Three other senior managers selected by Young, who were due to have taken up their new positions on 9 January, have had their appointments rejected by the executive committee.
The resignations are the result of major differences between Young and the company's directors and executive committee. They come shortly before the airline is due to make a final decision on aircraft types and routes. Young had planned to launch services from the new Macau International Airport on 1 November.
Young says that he was originally briefed by Chinese vice-minister Li Zhou to "...build an airline with a new set of standards, which would be the future benchmark for all Chinese airlines". He complains, however, of being "misled" over the extent of his authority and the power of the airline's eight-man executive committee to appoint senior members of staff.
"If you're the chief executive, the buck stops there. The chief executive has to have control and pick his own team. Having a whole lot of people delivered to your doorstep is no way to run an airline. This was a matter, a principle for me," he says.
Young and the executive committee were also divided over the issue of discounting fares. He explains: "In South-East Asia, yields are so low that any further erosion of fares is a nonsense. They couldn't understand the correlation between yields and revenue. I couldn't go along with this."
Air Macau's executive committee and, in particular, its Chinese-controlled majority shareholder, Macau Aviation Services (MASC), are understood to have been unhappy with Young's "individualistic approach" and the size of salaries being paid to expatriate managers.
There have been suggestions also of a split within MASC and a power struggle between the Civil Aviation Administration of China and China National Aviation for control of the carrier.
"This is the first joint-venture airline with the Chinese and, as case study, it doesn't bode well for the future," concludes one Western aviation analyst.
Source: Flight International
