I think its getting a bit personal, acronyms of people's names, their gender, etc are entirely irrelevant to their ability. There are a selection of villains, if posters wish to consider them that way, in this story, right the way back to Jim French.
Replacing the BAe146 was the last good idea the airline had, getting 10 million from BA to take the regional business off their hands was probably the decision that sealed their fate. It seems like they never really got costs under control after that, never managed sustainable yield and were always seen as a second-rate alternative, partly due to the impression of poor operational reliability around the time of the BA Connect merger. Thats as much a marketing failure as anything else.
The Q400 wasn't a bad choice, but the ATR has increased in ability over the years, the additional speed can't really be used to any great advantage and the type had a few very high-profile landing gear accidents. Again, the E195 seemed like a decent choice at the time, but the lease costs were high and the fuel burn is equivalent to an A319 or A320, but with 20-50 fewer seats. Fine if you can get the yield, but flyBe clearly could not (see above).
flyBE had over 50% market share at many of the UK bases (from sky news).
- Anglesey (487) - 100%
- Southampton (14,274) - 95%
- Belfast City (13,767) - 79.5%
- Exeter (5,498) - 78%
- Newquay (2,679) - 65.9%
- Wick (413) - 58.7%
- Jersey (6,791) - 57.4%
- Cardiff (4,292) - 51.8%
- Guernsey (4,543) - 49.5%
- Isle of Man (3,190) - 49.4%
BHD, EXT, NQY, Wick, JER, IOM, CGI don't have viable train competition. These are not always glamorous routes, but how was the route network not viable? Or was the airline in such a state of financial ruin that there was no mechanisms by which to save it? It looks like everything had already been sold, mortgaged or borrowed against. Cashflow collapsed, due to Coronavirus travel restrictions, I don't think all of that was the current CEO's fault or doing. She inherited a disaster zone thats been limping along