Professional website, modest start.
The schedule shows an aircraft flying EDI-OXF in the evening and OXF-EDI in the morning- not sure if it's an Oxford-based aircraft doing a day stop in EDI or an EDI aircraft night-stopping in OXF. Hopefully there is some other flying for the aircraft (whether for Varsity Express or another contract) fitting around this.
I guess my initial question is just about the economics. There are lead-in fares of £49 including taxes and £149 flexible, both one-way. Taxes are shown as £16.64 one-way so (let's just take these numbers for the time being) that means that a one-way passenger is netting the airline either £33 or £133. Managing a 60% load factor day in day out would be a good achievement - that's about 11 passengers per flight. And let's assume that six of those book the cheap fare and five the expensive fare (these are just assumptions - I obviously don't know their planned RM policy or the size of the market). That gives revenue of £863 per flight to cover the ACMI and fuel and overheads. It's a 90 minute flight - that revenue figure feels just about doable but a bit tight. I don't think it's sustainable as a standalone operation but as noted they plan to diversify, which would allow them to spread some of the overhead.
So the jury may still be out, but it's several light years more credible than Excelsis!
[what is the standard unit of credibility anyway? the "reciprocal Ryanair"?
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