The Debonair management were clueless when it came to putting together schedules. I mean who wants to go from Luton to Barcelona at 9am when all other airlines would be arriving at 9am !! The aircraft (B733) then turned and flew to Gatwick, crew change then back to Barcelona then back to Luton. A classic W pattern but the timings were awful. Management blamed a lack of Barcelona slots being available.
The Munich schedules were all cock-eyed too. Leave Luton at 8am and get to Munich at 1130 local then sit there for the day until 1800 local before returning to Luton. They then had that aircraft schedule for the Luton to Moenchengladbach but the aircraft only had a 30 minute window before Moenchengladbach closed. Invariably, most evening arrivals diverted to Dusseldorf which then meant the morning rotation to Luton was delayed whilst waiting for passengers to get from Moenchengladbach to Dusseldorf. Some days the aircraft would fly Luton to Munich to Barcelona to Munich to Luton but the way they had crews rostered was unbelievable until someone stepped in and tore up the rosters and started again to make it more efficient.
The best one though was Luton to Rome leaving at 0915. By the time you got to Rome, half the day was gone. The aircraft could have flown a UK domestic schedule then return to Luton before the Rome trip but management kept it on the ground to 0915. An utter waste of an aircraft's available time.
The classic though was when the CEO decided to contract 5 x 146's out to Lufthansa and 2 to Air France and failed to tell anyone else such as engineering, ops, crewing, reservations. They got a weeks notice to put it all together and as a result of taking 7 aircraft out of the Debonair daily schedule, that in itself imploded and the result was a foray of costly sub-charters. So what money was being made on contracting out to Lufthansa/Air France was lost on sub-charters. Waste of time.
The CEO then pulled the same stunt again and contracted 2 x 146's out to Swissair. So of the fleet of I think 12 aircraft at the time, 9 were contracted out. Most of the ground staff in the terminal and ops/crewing were on the verge of nervous breakdowns trying to keep everything running and passengers happy and management simply did not care.
An utter chaotic airline if ever there was one.....