One of the two airlines Flybe is considering is actually Baboo. This not a rumor. I know it from Baboo top management. Baboo is in a very difficult financial situation. M1 Travel - that owns over 80% of the shares - is fed up of loosing money and wants to sell it to get out of this mess.
Baboo leases 2 DH4 and 3 E190. The CEO has introduced a fleet and staff reduction program. The winter fleet is going to be reduced dramatically and it seems that they will only keep the DH4 (they have canceled a huge winter charter program with Kuoni, Club Med and Hotelplan to LPA, TFS, SSH, HRG).
I bet this is a 2 steps restructuring. 1) Baboo reduces its size, makes a DH4 only fleet, get rid of the E90, cancel bleeding routes. 2) Flybe takes them and does Marketing/Revenue Management/Call center/Crew planning/etc... from Exeter. If they keep the Swiss AOC they probably need a few guys to manage local HR and Accounting.
And 3) the base becomes profitable and Flybe adds progressively 1 or 2 DH4 to the GVA "base".
