Out of the Ashes

After bankruptcy, unwittingly replicating the past is a sure way to fail again. SN Brussels Airlines, born from the ashes of SABENA, avoided this route under the leadership of Rob Kuijpers as Executive Chairman and Peter Davies as CEO.

They rebuilt the confidence of all the company's stakeholders and instituted a new operational performance measurement system. The kind of forecasting that the company had never done before led to continuing profits as early as the second year of operations and the acquisition of Virgin Express in 2005. This was achieved with a modest investment, 12 times less than Swiss International Airlines, burned through the same conditions.

Through the SN Brussels Airline case, this book operates as a repellent against management complacency. Rooted in practical exposure to daily operations the book shows how, through the sense of execution deployed at SN, both keeping and developing confidence in line management and questioning of forecasting are crucial.

The Author takes us behind the scenes on a management journey through the heart of the day-today restructuring of SN Brussels Airlines, and shares the dos and don'ts of his hands-on experience. This straightforward approach takes practical details of daily business life and insightfully puts them in to perspective. The result is a step-by-step programme for recovering corporate health.

This book addresses crucial topics in a no-nonsense style. It is about smoothness of management execution, where techniques and tools become a reflex at corporate level, so they can be used without even thinking about them.