they're doing a 2 for 1 offer. on all flights between 1st of December and 31st of January. An attempt to get more bums on seats over the winter months.

passenger figures are now out, just under 26,000

http://www.planestation.com/projects...105-oct04.html

p.s. these are the figures for Kent airport, where eujet is the only operator so i'm presuming most of these are eujet. They do not however include figures for Shannon.

I'm surprised nobody else has commented...
Planestation group (owner of Manston and big shareholder in EUjet) shares fell over 50% today after they announced their interim results. Vague talk about possibly having to raise further capital, possibly in the form of a further share issue.

from an EUjet point of view they said.

"I am particularly pleased to report that following the
acquisition of our shareholding in EU-JetOps Ltd ('EUjet') in May the airline started operations from Kent International Airport - Manston on 1 September and passenger volumes since that time have grown significantly with month on month improvements in both load factors and yields. Over the first thirteen weeks of
operation some 71,000 have flown the airline with bookings of 151,000 seats thus far."

serko I get the impression that you work for EUjet going on the posts you make. Answer this in your opinion:

EUjet to stay scheduled or switch to charter ? :ok:

viking9,

I don't work for eujet, just want to see the airline make a go of things from Manston.

so from that point of view I'm not in a good place to see if they will switch back to chartered. I don't think they will last long at sahnnon what with the Ryanair competition and the fact that the headquarters are moving to Manston measn there is no good reason to stay. I'd expect the Shannon base to be transferred to another planestation airport in the future. Lahr if it gets it's passenger licens otherwise, Pilsen, Parchim or Odense.

From todays Telegraph business pages, also on thier website,

Airport operator calls for cash refuel

The future of PlaneStation, the owner of Manston Airport in Kent and EUjet, came into question yesterday when the company admitted it did not have enough cash to keep operating and needed to raise at least £17m from investors.



Shares in the company halved to 20½p - they have been as high as 600p - as investors baulked at the bad news included in the company's interim results statement.

The company's pre-tax loss grew from £5.4m to £8.6m, revenue fell from £4.5m to £4.4m and the amount of cargo passing through the airport fell 33pc.

PlaneStation also revealed it spent £2.1m supporting EUjet, a new Irish airline run by PJ McGoldrick, the former chief executive of Ryanair. Plane‐Station owns 30pc and plans to buy the other 70pc in the next few months for €1 (69p).

Martin May, chief executive, announced plans to raise £17m through a sale of shares to institutions, and if there is demand, £5m through a sale to retail investors. An offer document is scheduled to be published in two weeks, and an extraordinary general meeting is set for three weeks later to authorise the capital raising and purchase of EUjet.

"If we can't raise the money we will have to do asset sales, and that would potentially destroy shareholder value," Mr May said. "That reaction [in the share price] is really because people don't understand the dynamics of this business."

PlaneStation, formerly Wiggins Group, aims to build up EUjet and fly 880,000 passengers from Kent next year.

Mr May said he had cut the annual cash costs from £7.4m to £4m, and a bank loan due on December 31 had been extended by three years.

Shareholders hit by yesterday's fall included Prudential, Artimus, Legal & General and Schroders.

Mr May was this week named turnaround professional of the year for his work at scaffolder Cape, which he took from a share price below 10p to above 100p.


PlaneStation



draw your own views over this i guess, but it looks like planestations future rides on eujet to me.
















.

bish-bash I suspect your conclusions are the same as mine

Some more factual data on their CAA published load factors for October

Amsterdam 34%
Dublin 35%
Edinburgh 37%
Faro 39%
Gerona 26%
Glasgow 25%
Jersey 25%
Madrid 30%
Malaga 54%
Manchester 32%
Murcia 51%
Nice 29%
Palma 58%
Prague 38%
Shannon 31%

So apart from Malaga, Murcia and Palma there is no prospect of any route working

Any investor giving them £22, let alone £22M needs their head examined, pj escapes again

Bean Counter
for the less web aware amongst us can you provide the link to those figures from CAA
many thanks

Dinsdale

Here's the link to the CAA Airport Statistics in which you will find both domestic and international traffic, however, the latest data is for August 2004, so I'm not sure where Bean Counter's got his from.....

http://www.caa.co.uk/erg/erg_stats/sgl.asp?sglid=3

They come from the CAA in electronic format, distributed to bean counters in all airlines contributing to the CAA information pool. The CAA dont update the website on a timely basis.

You will have to take my word for it until the actual stats appear but I can assure you they are real.

Well it was raised internally over a year ago and repeated regularly - the writing was spray painted on the wall in big letters and ignored. The initial investment has been recouped.

The crews had a spread bet on the company lasting until Xmas - most pessimistic was September. Now with the pilots who aren't bonded are all strapping on their parachutes or reaching for the balck and yellow handle it does look the light at the end of the tunnel is the 9.40 coming the other way.

Such a pity that all the hard work that went in to starting the company was wasted. C'est la vie.

It's feasable also that very soon, one of EUjet's aircraft will have something parked in front of it to stop it departing. Load factors are very low as we have seen and the 2 for 1 sale is a tell tale sign that they just cannot get bums on seats.

PJ will still walk away smiling - he always does. Its the others who are left behind crying - those others are those who actually do the work.

Watch this space..........

Is it FEASIBLE that Ryanair are in trouble, as they're giving away free seats, the two for one offer having ended?

The vultures are circling.

Today I was given the summer schedule and requested to extend RFFS times into the night for late arrivals.

Announcement to be made next week that funding has been placed by backers.

VIKING9....Is it likely that the airport will prevent its own airline from making a revenue flight for itself by blocking it in? :rolleyes:

It's entirely possible if they are losing money at the rate they appear to be. What about other suppliers, fuellers, caterers, cleaners etc - are they all owned by Planestation ? I doubt it.

Jes Ryanair can afford to give away seats at the rate they do. 70% of their profits don't actually come from seat sales, it's all the add ons......hotels, car hire, credit cards, onboard sales etc

Apologies for really stretching bad news (because of course, the fat lady hasn't sung yet, she's still just clearing her throat...)

The loads are bad, the finances are worse and the basic premise of an airline based at Manston flying a fleet of Fokkers on a lo-co model was always shakey.

Bad idea - no-one walks away from EUJet unscathed if that happens. So, forgive me for assuming the worst, but what is a feasable plan to wind up operations, and when would we expect d-day?

*j*

WELL EU-JET FINALLY DID THE SENSIBLE THING AND PULLED OFF THE MSE-JER ROUTE IT WAS A BAD IDEA TO START IT ANYWAY WHICH WAS MADE WORSE BY THE TIME OF YEAR. THEY HAVE GOT TO BE THE WORST AIRLINE I HAVE ENCOUNTERED. THEY DIDN'T INFORM THE HANDLING AGENT UNTIL THE DAY BEFORE THEIR WEEKLY FLIGHT. BUT HEY WITH REGULAR LOADS OF JUST 10-20 PAX IT WASN'T GOING TO BE A PROBLEM RE-BOOKING THEM!!!

Did you have to shout that Fodder??

Why do some people on here take such delight in an airline struggling? Ok it didn't seem to be the best airport to operate from, nor were the Fokkers an ideal size (even if they were cheap to acquire), but if it does fold there will be real people finding themselves out of a job. If it happens either side of Christmas that would be even worse.

However, if people always stayed on the safe side of life nothing would ever change. It is necessary to occassionally fly in the face of accepted wisdom to find out if accepted wisdom is flawed. I doubt that any of the staff of EU Jet were blind to the precarious nature of the venture, but they took a view that it was worth a try and suited their immediate needs, be that getting jet hours on the licence, command hours, first job as Cabin Crew etc etc.

It isn't over yet, and they took the decision to launch in the slack months so it seems reasonable that things can only get better for them. One good part of launching in the slack months is that they have gained a lot of experience of the operation whilst affecting not too many people, therefore if the summer months do provide a boom period there is more chance of the airline offering a smooth performance to a greater number of passengers.

I was amongst those who thought the plan to operate from KIA was flawed, but then in days gone by I never thought Stansted would catch on either. For the sake of those working for EU Jet I wish them survival and good fortune in the future. If it does go wrong, I shan't be gloating, I shall be sad for them.