Colegate - I can think of one; Go Fly. Hugely popular, awarding winning low cost airline with tremendous growth and profitability.
As Rod said, somedays he wishes he'd sold BA and kept Go.
That is why Go was so vulnerable
I hate to quibble but Ryanair at STN had no effect on Go at all. We only competed on one route (Rome) and the marketing, product and customer were quite different.
Go was vulnerable after Bob Ayling was ousted because the Board of BA was scared that the Pilot and Cabin Crew unions in BA would take action when they saw Go Fly expand and - as they would phrase it - 'take their work'. BA was and is vulnerable to its unions and any hint of another Cabin Crew strike would have sent the share price tumbling at a time when the Index had already seen massive drops.
With cashflow starting to look tight and an air of crisis post Sept11th descending the management took to the bunker. A quick disposal of Go would take away a potential Union conflict and raise enough capital to replenish nearly all the staplers in Waterside.
Despite Stelios offering nearly £300m for it in the form of a few quid and lot of easyJet share options they sold it some bloke with three eyes for £110m which indeed was enough to do the staplers and also give the cappuccino bar in Waitrose a fresh lick of paint.
A year later the man with three eyes decided he's quite like a couple of hundred million quid himself and flogged it to Stelios who by this time was rolling around on a King-size bed of cash inside a house made of gold.
Meanwhile the passengers flocked to Go who literally couldn't find new aircraft fast enough and who were literally about to sign on the line for a fleet of new Airbus 318/319/321 with which they were going to take over Europe and slightly beyond.
Luckily for easyJet they were able to stop that, lock the brand in the broom cupboard, repaint all the aircraft and concentrate fully on their unique Orange culture - which, I believe, is some form of fruit yogurt popular with management.
Cheers
WWW