flyPOP
Over the last 10 years, there have been a series of attempts to set up a new airline flying just between the UK and regional cities of India (often involving Amritsar) - they seem to always end in tears.
Flying between the UK and Ahmedabad / Amritsar will be very heavy on ethnic and possibly highly seasonal VFR traffic with little in the way of business. Visas are required for travel in either direction (unless you are of Indian origin but have a British passport - mainly people who were born in India but have emigrated to the UK). For the general UK public, neither city has a strong tourist appeal. OK the Golden Temple and Wagah are both interesting but that knocks off Amritsar in 1 day. There's a reason as to why the likes of BA, Jet and Virgin are so much more interested in Bangalore, Delhi and Mumbai with all the year-round corporate flying that goes on to these 3 cities. I do not consider Air India to be a commercial airline - I see it as a part of the Indian Govt - but they have a Star Alliance feed in Europe and their own network feed in India, fly non-stop between the UK and Ahmedabad and, with a refuel stop, direct to Amritsar. When you're running an aircraft which has a fixed supply of heavily economy focussed seats, wastage due to seasonality is bad news.
A verbal agreement with a LCC at Stansted, presumably Ryanair, to supply connecting passengers is worthless. Firstly verbal is not enforceable - either it's in writing or the LCC can (and possibly will) change its mind on the terms at a later date. Secondly, who handles the EU261 cases where something goes wrong with a connection ? A sizeable LCC should be seeing desperation and smelling blood in the water when it views flyPOP - and will have no hesitation in ensuring the terms of any agreement heavily favour the LCC over flyPOP. Even if the terms favour flyPOP, I don't see this as contributing much to flyPOP - the Indian population in the UK is about 1.5 million, the European country with the 2nd largest Indian population is Italy with just 150,000 - the MEB3 and TK should already have the Italy - India market covered, compared to flying 2 hours in the wrong direction before making a connection
Finally any company that plans to give 51% of its profits to charity is going to have a very hard time borrowing money from a bank to start operations - the lender would likely deem the company unable to repay the loan requested and refuse to lend in the first place. There are plenty of airlines which explicitly spell out the message to new hires 'We are a business not a charity'. A charity has no business running a long haul airline, and a start up long haul airline will need every penny of cashflow it can find just to survive in business before even thinking about giving it away. If the financial backers of this airline want to support some charities, they would be better off just giving the money direct to charity and avoiding pouring their wealth into this likely financial disaster.
I don't like to see the small guy squished out of the market in general, but frankly I look at this airline as a money-losing pit
Last edited by davidjohnson6; 9th Jan 2017 at 12:53.