Originally Posted by
Planespeaking
I agree under Jim (call me James) French Flybe greatly over ordered its Embraer fleet with delusions of grandeur, and from then on it was downhill all the way.
Point-to-Point small jets from local airports is certainly an interesting business model. No-one in Europe has successfully made money with. I think it's being a bit revisionist to say that flyBe 'over ordered'. The competitive landscape has changed utterly in 15 years. The E195s were ordered in June 2005, back then Ryanair had around 100 aircraft, flying to and from (very)secondary airports. Airports like EDI, GLA, MAN and BHX were LCC-free zones, bar Ryanair to Dublin. easyJet were still building their presence at LGW and a lot of people "would never fly an LCC". In retrospect flyBe would probably have been better off with 737-700s or A319s, but they probably couldn't finance them and the feeling at the time would have been that those aircraft were "too large" for the use flyBe had planned.
All of that said, flyBe has repeatedly failed to assess risks to their business and alter the model. Moves like flyBe Nordic and wet-leasing to SN seem good ideas, but flyBe lost a fortune in the Nordics. Thats an impressive feat with a cost+ model.