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Old 22nd Dec 2006, 19:22
  #113 (permalink)  
catflaps
 
Join Date: May 2006
Location: Ramsgate, Kent
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Nope I still don't get it MDIS. You seem to want us to believe that EUjet was a roaring success but you won't accept that it lost shed-loads of money:

"Please tell me what happened to the £30 Million raised in the City which was meant to guarantee the operation for 2 years. It was all gone in 2 months!! This was not the fault of EUjet but more to do with the mis management of Planestation."

I'm not going to disagree with you about mismanagement at Planestation. However, that had been going on for years and the precariousness of their finances financial was well-known. For a start, the £30million you refer to was NOT raised to subsidise EUjet. It was raised to save the parent company. Most of the money was swallowed up by debts that the parent company had already amassed in buying and upgrading Manston, a mistake that Infratil is now repeating.

You say that the money was supposed to "guarantee the operation for two years." This presumed upon the goodwill of the banks, particularly HBOS. It was not in the gift of Planestation to offer guarantees when they were so heavily in debt. Who told you that there was a guarantee?
What you can't get away from is the fact that HBOS pulled the plug after looking at all of the figures. They knew that their chances of recouping the money they'd lent were reducing day-on-day and they are a business. So, they pulled the plug and they got their money back.

We can safely assume that if EUjet's finances had looked as rosy as you suggest they might have been persuaded to give it a bit longer. However, the first rule of running an airline states that if you are giving seats away, you won't make any money. The second rule states that if you use the wrong planes on a route you won't make any money. The third rule states that if you pick the wrong routes you won't make any money. The fourth rule states that if you overstretch yourself you'll go bust in a big way. The fifth rule is that only a complete clod could disobey the first four rules, go bust, and still think it had all been a great success.
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