S'funny that no-one has picked up on Xtypeman's comments, a page back....
A few months ago, UKIA would have had their business plan analysed in some considerable depth by our friends in the CAA. The CAA would have stress tested all the assumptions in the plan - lease charges, loads, yields, fuel prices, engineering costs - the works - in order to come up with the magic number, the level of funding that UKIA would have had to prove they had, to ensure that they could run for 24 months, at hand prior to the operating licence being granted - and this cannot take into account monies paid for tickets, since you aren't allowed to flog tickets until you have an operating licence.
The CAA are not naive, and are not stupid. The plan they would have seen and approved must have held water. They would certainly have made some nasty assumptions on fuel prices!
Now, certain factors can blow a business plan apart - if Boeing had grounded the 767 for months, or the UK suddenly fell out with the countries that UKIA wanted to fly to - you can't really allow for such nasties. But I wasn't aware there had been any since UKIA launched....
But the fact remains, that a matter of months in to the 24 month plan, UKIA have seemingly run out of cash. Wool has been pulled over eyes here, I think...
TA