Originally Posted by
virginblue
Hasn't been dumping the E95 the plan ever since Operation Blackbird started in 2015 (?). Back then they could not get rid of all E95s as desired, stored 9 at NQY, IIRC, and then found some airports like CWL and DSA willing to fork out money in return for some shiny new routes. Unless these subsidised operations unexpectedly turned into a goldmine or the E95 could, with the help of a magic formula, be turned into a cash cow elsehwere, the plan must always have been to dispose of the E95. My understanding is that since 2015 they existed with BE on borrowed time.
Yes absolutely, but that's not what's being discussed, we're talking about the grounding or handback of pre lease expiry aircraft which still need paying for. The E195s weren't on borrowed time per se, they were always going to be handed back at the end of the lease agreement. The reason they were grounded was simple. I won't go into exact figures but to make the maths easy I'll start by saying lets assume the 195s operating costs were £5m per year which includes a lease cost of £2m per year, well anyone with half a brain can see that the aircraft would have to earn the company £3,000,000.01 to make it worthwhile flying them, because grounding them would still cost the £2m lease cost so anything they can make that cuts into the lease cost makes it worth flying them even at a loss, it's just a question of how much of a loss, conversely if you only made £2,999,999.99 then it's worth grounding them so you only have the lease costs to pay and not the operating costs as well. Well back in 2012 when they were being grounded we possessed 14 of them and due to the incredibly unrealistic lease deals done on them by Mr French there wasn't one E195 that made money, infact the losses were as described above, they didn't cover all the operating costs hence why they were grounded. It was only when they struck deals with airports that all of a sudden some of the losses were mitigated hence why they all started flying again.