Dark clouds ahead for Flybe
https://www.socialist.net/dark-cloud...-for-flybe.htm
The uncertainty about Flybe's fate affects a lot of people. It also places a question mark next to certain essential routes. Flybe has been providing crucial links to and from the islands. For example, the Isle of Man government is heavily dependent on the daily flights to Liverpool for patients.
Incidentally, just a few months ago the flight and cabin crew of Stobart Air in the Isle of Man, who have been providing this service so far as a subcontractor to Flybe, were effectively told they would be out of a job soon as Flybe will take this route back in-house next March. What will happen to these crucial medical transfers if Flybe folds?
At the time of Monarch's collapse, people were speculating that the airline was going to be bought for airport slots. Instead, competitor airlines let it fail by itself, and then bought what they wanted from the administrators without the associated headache of a needless acquisition.
With KPMG now going in, as they did with Monarch, history may well repeat itself - although it can't be excluded that the Stobart Group may take a gamble and buy Flybe outright.
The most likely scenario, however, remains Flybe being carved up and the vultures picking the premium slots on core profitable routes. In other words: asset stripping.
This is meant to be a ‘Golden Age’ for the aviation industry. Indeed, for flight crew at least, these last years have seen a small relative upswing compared to the days of the 2008 crash.
The tide, however, has started to turn. The writing is now truly on the wall. Monarch went bust last year, as did Primera Air a few months ago. The feeling amongst insiders is that “we are due a big one”.
Dark clouds are gathering on the horizon - and Flybe may well end up in them.