In the first class cabin of British Airways Flight 531, Xu Cang, who had accumulated a lot of sleepiness, fell asleep before the plane even took off. When he woke up, he looked at his watch and found that the plane had been flying for more than two hours.
Xu Cang secretly thought that it was not good. He had been preparing for so long, but in the end he only slept for two hours. There were still eight or nine hours to go. How could he sleep then?
Looking around, he found that most of the first-class passengers were different from him. Some were reading magazines or books, while others were chatting in groups. Next to Xu Cang, the marketing director of Kingfisher Airlines was flipping through documents. This guy was a workaholic. When Xu Cang boarded the plane with him, he saw that he had brought nothing else with him , just a pile of documents.
Originally, Xu Cang planned to take care of all the affairs of Kingfisher Airlines this time, but things turned out to be a little different from what Xu Cang had imagined. Previously, Xu Cang planned to allocate some of Kingfisher Airlines' planes to Spring Airlines, so that the allocation of transportation capacity could be rationalized.
However, with the issuance of the euro, the entire European market has become prosperous. The euro has shown its extremely strong position since its issuance, even overshadowing the US dollar.
With such a strong current prosperity and good expectations for the future, the European civil aviation market has also soared. Similar to Spring Airlines, Kingfisher Airlines is positioned lower than most mainstream European airlines. Therefore, the profit growth may not be so intuitive, but in terms of passenger and cargo volume growth, Kingfisher Airlines has already shown an explosive trend.
Kingfisher Airlines, which previously had excess capacity, was able to instantly absorb the abundant capacity that had previously seemed like a burden. If Xu Cang still followed his previous decision and transferred back about ten 737s from Kingfisher Airlines at this time, Kingfisher Airlines would actually be short of capacity.
To be honest, Xu Cang had not expected such a reversal of events.
Anyway, he worked in civil aviation and was relatively familiar with some historical events in the field, such as the fate of Kingfisher Airlines, but he did not know that the opportunity to turn everything around came from the issuance of the euro.
He originally thought that Kingfisher Airlines would recover slowly, but he didn't expect that this wave of euros would directly replenish Kingfisher Airlines' health, and his own planes were not enough. If this happened, Xu Cang's previous arrangements would be completely disrupted.
The agreement on the transfer of ownership has been signed, which does not take time. The key is how to coordinate the capacity relationship between Spring Airlines and Kingfisher Airlines, which will not be clear for a while.
There were a lot of things involved, and Xu Cang couldn't stay in the UK forever, so he simply brought back Kingfisher Airlines' marketing director and let him talk to Lu Xiaoxiao himself.
Although Lu Xiaoxiao is in charge of finance, Shi Lingling is the marketing manager. However, Shi Lingling is able to be the marketing manager because of her wide network of contacts, while Lu Xiaoxiao is better at business planning.
Perhaps because of the recent huge market fluctuations, the marketing director of Kingfisher Airlines probably had a very busy CPU, as if he had endless information to read, until he noticed Xu Cang had woken up out of the corner of his eye.
"Boss, am I disturbing you?" The marketing director put down his work in front of his new boss and asked, "Do you want me to dim the reading light?"
The two people's seats were next to each other. Even though there was a lot of space between the seats in the first-class cabin, the light from the seats next to them would still leak to Xu Cang.
Xu Cang straightened up: "No need."
The marketing director nodded, then stopped talking and went back to reading the materials.
He seemed to respect Xu Cang, but not much.
Xu Cang didn't care much about these things. He yawned and tilted his head to look at what the marketing director was looking at. He couldn't understand it at all. He immediately looked away and asked casually, "Have you figured out how many planes can be spared?"
The marketing director stopped what he was doing and looked at Xu Cang in surprise: "Boss, we can't spare any planes. On the contrary, we need more planes. In less than a week since the euro was issued, ticket sales have exceeded the entire month of last month, and are still rising. According to our estimates, ticket sales this month will increase by more than 600% compared to last month, and this is still the most conservative estimate. In my opinion, it is at least 700%."
Xu Cang's face looked extremely interesting. At this moment, he didn't know whether he should be happy or unhappy.
Fortunately, the explosive growth of Kingfisher Airlines will bring huge profits to its owner Xu Cang. But the problem is that his previous plans have been disrupted.
Originally, he planned to use the capacity transferred from Kingfisher Airlines to increase Spring Airlines' market share on domestic routes.
Xu Cang scratched his head: "Well, show me the financial statements for this month and last month."
The glance Xu Cang took just now seemed to be what he saw: the financial statements.
The marketing director didn’t intend to hide it, but reminded: “There are only less than two weeks this month.”
"I know, give it to me."
"Yes." The marketing director took out two pages of paper from a pile of information and gave them to Xu Cang. He also kindly pointed out which one was from last month and which one was from this month, fearing that Xu Cang would not understand.
Xu Cang's spoken English is average, but his vocabulary is quite impressive, and I can basically understand everything.
However, after looking at the financial statements, Xu Cang felt his eyes twitching.
Kingfisher Airlines was still losing money last month, but just a week after the euro was issued, it turned a profit this month. The marketing director was right, the European market was a little overheated, and Kingfisher Airlines was just sitting up in shock from its death throes. In this month's financial report, the marketing department's forecast for the later period was also attached, and the curve was as steep as a cliff.
If the marketing department's forecast is followed, Kingfisher Airlines' profit this month will be more than ten times that of Spring Airlines. This is the first year of turning losses into profits, so won't it be even more exaggerated in the future?
Xu Cang was speechless. The little fortune he had worked so hard to save was really nothing in front of European airlines. Therefore, the European and American markets are the most successful and mature markets for civil aviation in the world. They are too large and the profits are too high.
Spring Airlines earned all that money through hard work.
It seems that it is better not to move Kingfisher Airlines' fleet. Under the current situation, it is more profitable to keep the aircraft in Europe.
Xu Cang returned the financial report to the marketing director: "How big is the gap in your fleet?"
"If possible, it would be appropriate to import about 15 aircraft this year." The marketing director said: "The European market has a very good prospect now, and a lot of funds are pouring in. I don't think it will be difficult to raise funds. Compared with the funding issues of buying or leasing aircraft, I am more worried about the production capacity of Boeing or Airbus. Not only will our performance increase significantly, but other European airlines will also benefit, and they will definitely need to expand their market scale. If they are squeezed together like this, I am afraid that the aircraft production capacity of Boeing and Airbus will not be able to support it."
Large passenger aircraft are extremely sophisticated industrial products that cannot be increased at will. The European market is so overheated that Boeing and Airbus may not be able to sell enough aircraft.
In any case, in recent years, Boeing, Airbus, and even the next-level regional jet aircraft manufacturers have been able to get a small piece of the pie.
For some reason, at this moment, Xu Cang suddenly thought of Bombardier. In his memory, Bombardier should have killed himself, even though they had a lot of excellent aircraft technology.
I am afraid that the European market will suddenly become strong, so that the entire passenger aircraft market, from trunk lines to branch lines, will benefit, and Bombardier will also catch its breath. If this is the case, the impact on Xu Cang will be relatively large.
The problem of not being able to deploy aircraft from Kingfisher Airlines can be a minor or major issue and can generally be dealt with.
However, Xu Cang could not accept letting Bombardier eat the meat.
Bombardier is alive, so how can he attack Bombardier?
Seeing Xu Cang remained silent, the marketing director asked cautiously, "Boss, is there any problem with the fifteen aircraft? In terms of funding, we should be able to solve it alone, or do you have another opinion on the plan to introduce the aircraft?"
Xu Cang was simply absorbed in thinking about Bombardier. When he heard the marketing director's words, he suddenly woke up: "It's okay, fifteen..."
Before Xu Cang finished speaking, he suddenly felt the floor shaking. Xu Cang didn't pay much attention at first, thinking that the plane was experiencing continuous air turbulence.
However, Xu Cang soon felt something unusual. The vibration amplitude of the floor or the entire plane was too small, the amplitude was not large, but the frequency was very high and very regular.
This doesn't sound like the noise caused by air currents.
The marketing director also noticed something was wrong and looked down at the coffee cup on the corner of the table. The fine vibrations formed concentric circles of ripples on the surface of the coffee cup.
"There's a problem." The marketing director first looked at Xu Cang. As far as he knew, the new boss, who was less than 30 years old, had achievements in flying that were incomparable to ordinary people.
Xu Cang looked around and found nothing else, just the problem of the high-frequency vibration of the plane.
"Boss, what's going on?"
"How should I know what happened? I wasn't in the cockpit." Xu Cang was a little annoyed. Such a dangerous test flight of the Trent 1000 ended safely, so why did something go wrong on the way back?
Obviously, not everyone has Xu Cang's insight. At least as far as he could see, the first-class flight attendants and cabin managers in the front cabin were chatting as if nothing had happened, and they didn't think there was anything wrong with the plane.
Perhaps the two cabin managers simply misunderstood the aircraft vibration as being caused by airflow and did not pay much attention to it.
"Um?"
Xu Cang suddenly felt something in his heart. His nose moved and he sniffed a few times: "Rust?"
The two words " Xu Cang" were in Chinese, and the marketing director didn't understand: "What?"
"I mean rust." Xu Cang switched to English. He frowned and looked up at the air outlet above: "Don't you smell any strange smell?"
"Strange smell?" The marketing director was stunned and sniffed twice: "Really? Strange smell, the rust smell you mentioned?"
"Maybe I'm overthinking it." Xu Cang leaned back on the pillow. Perhaps because of his previous experiences, he was a little nervous.
The cruising altitude of the Boeing 777 is relatively high, close to the stratosphere. There is no obvious weather activity here, perhaps because this kind of small-amplitude, high-frequency air flow phenomenon is more common.
In his previous life, Xu Cang could fly heavy aircraft, but he didn't have much experience. He mostly flew business jets and single-aisle passenger planes. This kind of air flow activity in the stratosphere was not something Xu Cang was familiar with.
"Are you okay?" Seeing that Xu Cang did not make any further moves, the marketing director looked around. He vaguely felt that something was wrong, but he could not put his finger on it. After all, he was not a professional, so he could only wait and see Xu Cang's reaction.
All we can say is that the marketing director's psychological quality is not that of an ordinary person, or he trusts Xu Cang too much. Seeing that Xu Cang didn't express anything, he continued to work with peace of mind.
Xu Cang leaned back on the sofa with his eyes slightly closed, but his lips were tightly pursed, not looking like he was relaxing and resting.
The marketing director glanced at Xu Cang, and seeing him closing his eyes and resting, he shrugged his shoulders. It seemed that everything had calmed down and everything was back to normal.
He stopped thinking about the vibration of the plane and focused all his attention on his work. Suddenly, as if he had discovered something, he took out a gold pen from his shirt collar pocket and immediately wanted to mark something on the document.
However, the moment his pen tip touched the paper, time seemed to freeze at that moment.
"The smell of rust." The marketing director raised his head suddenly and looked towards the air outlet: "It's coming from there."
"No!" The marketing director's gold pen was pressed against the paper, and because he unconsciously used too much force, a little ink leaked out of the pen tip: "There's still movement!"
Just now, he was talking to Xu Cang, which distracted him. Not long ago, he had focused all his attention on his work again, and since Xu Cang stopped talking, he immediately realized that there seemed to be something abnormal besides the vibration of the plane.
Xu Cang suddenly opened his eyes: "It's a sound!"
It's like the sound produced by the friction of a wire bent on something!
Xu Cang stood up suddenly, and the noise immediately alarmed the first-class flight attendant and cabin manager who were chatting in the front cabin workroom.
Since the plane was already in the normal cruising phase, the cabin manager did not immediately ask Xu Cang to return to his seat. Instead, he asked, "Sir, is there anything I can help you with?"
Xu Cang did not speak immediately, but left his seat and went back to the economy class.
"Huh?" The cabin manager seemed to notice that something was wrong with Xu Cang. He unbuckled his seat belt, stood up and chased after Xu Cang.
After Xu Cang left his seat, he went straight to the economy class in the middle of the plane. He approached the window and looked out amid the puzzled gazes of the passengers.
At this moment, it was late at night and it was pitch black outside. Apart from the extremely faint moonlight and starlight, Xu Cang should not be able to see anything. But in fact, Xu Cang could actually see a light that appeared and disappeared at the engine's air intake, as if there were fireflies hidden inside the engine.
"Hey, the engine is glowing?" The passenger sitting in the window seat also looked outside because of Xu Cang and immediately noticed the condition of the engine.
"You don't understand." The person walking next to him didn't care: "There is a combustion chamber inside the engine, and it may be the flame leaking from the combustion."
The passenger sitting by the window was stunned: "Is that so?"
The companion nodded firmly: "That's for sure."
Xu Cang didn't say anything, he left from the porthole.
There is indeed a combustion chamber in the engine, and there is indeed flame when it burns, but it is absolutely impossible for it to leak out. If it leaks out, then the engine is a defective product and it is not certain to be hung on this Boeing 777.
"No cumulus clouds, no dust fog." Xu Cang whispered to himself: "It's not St. Elmo's Fire."
St. Elmo's fire usually only appears when ice crystals are present or when volcanic dust rubs against the protruding parts of the fuselage at high speed and produces ionization. Just now he could see the stars and the moon very clearly, which means that the sky around the plane is clear and there are no clouds or dust particles, which means that there are no conditions for St. Elmo's fire to appear.
If it's not St. Elmo's Fire, then what is it?
Before Xu Cang could comprehend the current situation, the cabin manager finally caught up with him.
"Sir, is there anything I can help you with? You can tell me."
Seeing that Xu Cang did not do anything radical, the cabin manager spoke in a relatively polite tone. She had just seen Xu Cang looking out the window, and as if he had thought of something, she leaned close to Xu Cang and whispered, "Sir, there is an empty window seat in the first-class cabin. If you need, you can switch seats."
Obviously, the cabin manager thought Xu Cang simply wanted to see the night view. However, he went to the economy class to see it, which was a little strange.
However, there are many strange people in the world, and everyone has different ideas. As long as Xu Cang doesn't do anything out of line, the cabin manager won't bother to care.
"What can I help you with?" Xu Cang took a deep breath, returned to the aisle, turned sideways and looked at the cabin manager: "Please help me contact the cockpit, I think they need my help."
The cabin manager was startled: "Sir, do you want to talk to the cockpit?"
"No!" Xu Cang shook his head and pointed to the door of the cockpit in front of him: "I want to go in."