Hello - I'm new here and this is my first post.
I've followed all of this with great interest. Varsity caught my eye because I used to live in Oxford, although I've spent most of my life in London, and I recently moved to Linlithgow, near Edinburgh. I was planning a trip to see my family and friends in London, and Varsity's forty-nine quid fares attracted me. I'd seen some peoples' reservations, but I fell for the hype, and booked a ticket for last Thursday, 11th. Just as well I'd been following developments, because if I'd not bothered checking the news regularly, I could have missed everything, and I would have turned up at Edinburgh Airport none the wiser. As it happens, I found out the day the operation went tits-up and was able to book a train ticket instead.
The whole thing is absolutely disgusting, and shows how the doubters have been vindicated. Utterly disgraceful behaviour - I can't cope with such blatant dishonesty, it makes me furious, and I'm taking this personally because I was taken for a ride, albeit in a very small way. I should have known better - the signs were there right from the start, from the utterly useless (no doubt cheap!) booking system on the website, to the stupid posy pictures of MH on the publicity, trying to look like Captain Jack or something.
Now the truth has emerged, it's obvious to anyone with any sense that his business model was completely fraudulent and flawed. What's not been answered so far is whether he managed to fool himself. He managed to con everyone else - but did he do this deliberately, or did he live in such a fantasy world that he thought it would all work?
I'll admit to being no expert in aviation - railways are my forte - but I think one thing common to both trains and planes is an extremely active enthusiast scene. Often enthusiasts know a lot about the business and often they work in it with some success, but often...errr...they don't. Halstead strikes me as the classic unrealistic and deluded enthusiast with a passion for things that just don't work. He clearly seems to love both Oxford Airport and Jetstream 31s, despite the fact that Oxford isn't going to become a major hub anytime soon, and Jetstream 31s are too small, too noisy and too uneconomic to operate profitably for any length of time on a route like this. I've seen it in the railway industry so often, when enthusiasts do their nut when their favourite locos or coaches are withdrawn in favour of something more appropriate, modern, comfortable and economic. Railways - and airlines - are not theme parks for enthusiasts to play around in. That's what the preservation movement and private flying clubs are for. If you're going into business, there's no room for sentimentality or nostalgia for anything - you need to be extremely hard-nosed and realistic. Clearly MH lives in a fantasy world where things like taking responsibility for your own actions don't matter.
I watch further developments with interest...
PP