Flybe-V2

[BA318]

An interesting statement by Loganair’s chief on the whole mess.

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jonat...ium=member_ios

[ATNotts]

Originally Posted by Pain in the R's

Love the way Brexit is blamed for everything. Flybe’s troubles were of its own making.

Indeed, Brexit is the principal cause of many ills in UK industry and commerce but its hard to see how it had anything to do with Flybe's demise.

[cavokblues]

Losing £5m a month and yet they persisted in sending an empty Dash up to Newcastle and back just to preserve the LHR operations until the very end. Madness and infuriating.

Sorry to all the good folk involved here. Never nice to see this happen and you all deserve better.

[cavokblues]

A quote from the Times article above.

"Administrators said the company was hurt by a delay in the delivery of 17 further aircraft that would have helped build out its network and give it scale to compete. They were held up by delays in the global supply chain for aircraft."

Utter drivel. If you're losing £5m already I'm not sure how you would have faired with another 17 aircraft on top.

[SWBKCB]

The quote from the administrators is this (see link as #933 ) - I read this to include the previous delays we already know about:

David Pike continued: “Unfortunately, the Company had to withstand a number of shocks since its relaunch, not least of which was the late delivery of 17 aircraft which it needed for its schedule, and which has severely compromised both the airline’s capacity and its ability to remain competitive. This has driven significant financial losses and an associated cash drain for the business.

[SWBKCB]

Originally Posted by Pain in the R's

Love the way Brexit is blamed for everything. Flybe’s troubles were of its own making.

Where has Brexit been blamed?

[Una Due Tfc]

Originally Posted by cavokblues

Losing £5m a month and yet they persisted in sending an empty Dash up to Newcastle and back just to preserve the LHR operations until the very end. Madness and infuriating.

Sorry to all the good folk involved here. Never nice to see this happen and you all deserve better.

Unless they were holding onto the slots in the hope of cashing in on them.

[Wycombe]

Originally Posted by cavokblues

A quote from the Times article above.

"Administrators said the company was hurt by a delay in the delivery of 17 further aircraft that would have helped build out its network and give it scale to compete. They were held up by delays in the global supply chain for aircraft."

Utter drivel. If you're losing £5m already I'm not sure how you would have faired with another 17 aircraft on top.

Maybe not entirely. They were constantly having to cancel flights and change/reduce their schedule (sometimes at short notice), at least partly because there were persistent delays with aircraft due for delivery, and coming out of maintenance. Some of the ex-Flybe Mk1 aircraft that they were due to take could not be as they were not in a fit state after 2 years parked on cold/wet European airfields, allegedly.

Had some of those aircraft been available in a more timely fashion, they could have built resilience and a more reliable schedule, which may have delivered more revenue and resulted in less of the costs (which must have been significant) associated with frequent cancellations. Attempts were made to mitigate by bringing in aircraft from LOT, for example, but the damage was probably already done.

Having said all that, some of the route decisions seemed odd to say the least. None of that was the fault of the people operating the service, who didn't deserve the situation that has now transpired.

[runway30]

Originally Posted by Wycombe

Maybe not entirely. They were constantly having to cancel flights and change/reduce their schedule (sometimes at short notice), at least partly because there were persistent delays with aircraft due for delivery, and coming out of maintenance. Some of the ex-Flybe Mk1 aircraft that they were due to take could not be as they were not in a fit state after 2 years parked on cold/wet European airfields, allegedly.

Had some of those aircraft been available in a more timely fashion, they could have built resilience and a more reliable schedule, which may have delivered more revenue and resulted in less of the costs (which must have been significant) associated with frequent cancellations. Attempts were made to mitigate by bringing in aircraft from LOT, for example, but the damage was probably already done.

Having said all that, some of the route decisions seemed odd to say the least. None of that was the fault of the people operating the service, who didn't deserve the situation that has now transpired.

To make a difference those 17 frames would have to cover their variable costs and make a contribution to the fixed costs. If they had already picked the best routes and weren’t covering the variable costs, where are you going to place the extra frames where they are going to do anything except lose more money? This was the problem with Flybe 1, they were operating aircraft where revenue was less than total cost and eventually the money runs out.

I suspect that if Cyrus had seen aircraft at least covering their variable cost, it would have been a reason to put in more capital to cover the fixed costs and continue increasing the size of the fleet.

[Asturias56]

If they'd started properly and not sold seats & services they couldn't provide they might have lasted a while longer. But, TBH , regional airlines have always been a very marginal business in the UK

[cavokblues]

Truth of the matter is the demand wasn't there. They've rarely been above 50% full on the CAA stats and from their ticket pricing structure you need way more than 38 people per flight to be even remotely close to breaking even.

Obviously, that was all compounded by the wrong choice of aircraft and reliability issues etc.

Cyrus are £30m out of pocket as a result. But that's all on them. Why they thought they could take an airline and failed brand, which hadn't made any money for about 15 years, and then turn a profit focusing on Heathrow, against national carriers etc is madness and naive at best about the industry.

They would have been better focusing entirely on one hub to start with, Belfast or Bhx, somewhere where they may have been able to establish a niche and competitiveness against low cost rivals.

[Blackfriar]

Originally Posted by cavokblues

Truth of the matter is the demand wasn't there. They've rarely been above 50% full on the CAA stats and from their ticket pricing structure you need way more than 38 people per flight to be even remotely close to breaking even.

Obviously, that was all compounded by the wrong choice of aircraft and reliability issues etc.

Cyrus are £30m out of pocket as a result. But that's all on them. Why they thought they could take an airline and failed brand, which hadn't made any money for about 15 years, and then turn a profit focusing on Heathrow, against national carriers etc is madness and naive at best about the industry.

They would have been better focusing entirely on one hub to start with, Belfast or Bhx, somewhere where they may have been able to establish a niche and competitiveness against low cost rivals.

Rule 1 of airlines. How do you make a small fortune? Start with a large one and run an airline. Unless Cyrus know something we don't, they have just been educated.

[01475]

I'm still scratching my head at this one as much as when there was talk of the possibility of creating a future FlyBe 2. At the same time as being sad for the staff, perhaps it's also good that capitalism has a defect in that people with capital but no idea how to run an airline were able to provide employment attempting to have one set up.

This isn't an I told you so thread, but I can't remember seing anyone that didn't tell us so. I will never be able to work out any aspect of what made them think this was a good idea, and why if they did want to set up an airline they'd use an existing failed brand or such a weird collection of routes. I'm sure there's a triva master here that can give more than one previous example of a people stranded at airports style airline failure where someone has later come along and reused the brand, but I can't think of one!

[V12]

Originally Posted by 01475

I'm still scratching my head at this one as much as when there was talk of the possibility of creating a future FlyBe 2. At the same time as being sad for the staff, perhaps it's also good that capitalism has a defect in that people with capital but no idea how to run an airline were able to provide employment attempting to have one set up.

This isn't an I told you so thread, but I can't remember seing anyone that didn't tell us so. I will never be able to work out any aspect of what made them think this was a good idea, and why if they did want to set up an airline they'd use an existing failed brand or such a weird collection of routes. I'm sure there's a triva master here that can give more than one previous example of a people stranded at airports style airline failure where someone has later come along and reused the brand, but I can't think of one!

No one likes a smart arse who shows he can be wise after the event. But the trouble with FlyBe-2 is that we were ALL wise before the event; indeed wise as soon as we saw FlyBe-1's COW park her very small tank onto LOG's front lawn. It was always going to end in tears, and yes we ALL on here could see that. There is, however, still a latent arrogance that exudes from wealthy people, who always seem to want to own an airline and prove the 'wise-after-the-event-neersayers' wrong; mated with airline employees who have been dumped on from a great height with no notice, yes there will be people hoping the phoenix will rise, and it's way better than working for Tesco's. Surely we can ALL understand that.

Aviation brings out the best in people, and the worst in untrained investors and dubious airline management candidates. JF, SH, and COW all lost the plot, and one of them never had the plot in the 1st place.

[BA318]

Twitter

Interesting…

[cavokblues]

Do they actually own the slots? The last slots were grandfathered to the old Flybe, which were lost and not transferred to the new operation despite an appeal.

Weren't they just leasing them?

[SWBKCB]

It's been clear amongst all the smoke and mirrors that the slots were the only thing of value in this whole mess. Doubt whether Cyrus were ever that interested in running an airline, just extracting value.

[Albert Hall]

It’s been pretty apparent that Flybe V2 had a fairly draconian social media policy for its staff and there has been next to no comment.

From all that I heard, just as JF’s enormous aircraft order (pure hubris), SH’s ego and COW’s incompetence led to the eventual demise of Flybe V1, the leader at Flybe V2 has been something short of stellar too. A bizarre insistence on being called “Mister Pflieger”, inability to listen or take decisions are amongst the last year’s stories. No point in posting at the time as clear those inside couldn’t discuss it - but now those constraints are no longer, would anyone be able to lend any insight as to whether this was all true?

[southamptonavgeek]

Originally Posted by BA318

https://twitter.com/rboyle/status/16...pZK-gLQ9IXbvjQ

Interesting…

And surely also nonsensical given the slots are said to be held by the administrator?

[BA318]

Originally Posted by southamptonavgeek

And surely also nonsensical given the slots are said to be held by the administrator?

The owners are listed as creditors. The administrators sell it for enough and they get their money.

The Loganair chief’s LinkedIn is quite interesting. He was leading Zoom (the airline) when they went bust. He made a point of saying how the last thing he did was make sure every employee at least got the pay they were due. They were not able to do the usual transfer so a team sat there making all the payments individually.

Edit: I’d heard Flybe didn’t pay staff but this was untrue so have removed that statement. Apologies