...and there is the 'small' matter of frequent flyer rewards. One assumes that most business class flyers are employees or (well-off) self-employed, and they ain't going to give up the perk of 'airmiles' in a hurry.

Trying to promote business-class service out of secondary airports such as Luton and Stansted is also not easy.

Did Silverjet actually do anything wrong? I don't really think so. They had a good package that was working well, but have unfortunately felt the pain , as all of us are to some degree, (both at work and in the home) of the crippling rise in oil prices . If oil prices had not reached the pretty much unforseen levels they are today i have every confidence SJ would still be here, and still growing. It was out of their hands, like it is for all of us, and there is little they could do.
I think it's a great shame that in a fairly short space of time the fortunes of the western world has been turned on it's head, and SJ amongst others have had to pay the price.

Someone has been living in the clouds for a long time
 

Spinaker you mentioned....I feel that staff were given a false hope,

staff, press, passengers, creditors, markets, shareholders the list is endless

who keeps giving this false hope?

avrodamoI suggest that they launched at the wrong time. The UK economy had been on the Up for some ten years and was overdue for a down turn. The property market boom was clear to all across that time and other indicators too. To launch as the the third biz-only airline (following Eos and MaxJet) and at the time when the UK (and others) were teetering on the brink - that was wrong. The fuel price might have closed them early but it was the wrong time.

Paxboy is right. While everyone has sympathy for the staff involved, all the focus on increasing fuel prices is only one side of the equation.

If you don't deliver the revenue to match the costs, e.g. fancy new dedicated terminal at LTN for one service a day, then the numbers will never stack up. Perhaps the failure of 3 start-ups of this nature shows that the business model is fundamentally flawed!

All well and good having fantastic customer feedback, but no wonder given the service being provided for the fares being charged....

Not only was it the fuel price that crippled us, but comments from the likes of mike stoddard lost the faith of the passengers of Silverjet. They were canceling flights and even not buying tickets because they believed they would go under. When that statement that was full of incorrect information came out, share prices dropped and so did bum's on seats on the aircraft.

Up and Up

Are you blaming Mike Stoddart for the demise of SJ?

There are certain individuals who are able to critically analyse the product and its likelihood of success: there probability of SJ lasting more than 36 months was ZERO.

Wrong product, wrong place.

Had SJ done a tad more research they would have discovered seating solutions which would have generated more revenue without compromising service. Equally they would have seen that a 2 class service would have had more chance of survival than a single class and that Luton was the wrong choice of gateway.

You were all sucked in by smart presentations and great words: wanna buy shares in my airline?

Quote:
PrivatAir have just flown their one millionth all business class passenger and customer feedback shows consistent 100% passenger satisfaction.

Where is 'the flaw'?!

Wellington Bomber

Privatair do not sell under their own name, but under the disguise of people like Lufthansa and operate under their prefix

That is the huge difference


Exactly my point - GlueBall states that ''all business class is a flawed concept'' - it is not true. This operator is running an excellent and successful all premium business.

As an aside, the following is from the BBC Business website report re Silverjet's demise:


"...Eos filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in April due to "insufficient costs"..."

That's certainly a new approach to business!

Sorry to hear the investors pulled out.

http://www.atwonline.com/news/story.html?storyID=13018

Still breathing
 

Seems that another group is looking at them.

"A sale is still possible, but there's no certainty. We are talking to them and to other people as well."

ArabJet, a planned premium class airline based in Dubai, is also interested in buying SilverJet, a person familiar with the situation told Reuters on Monday.

However, a deal is more difficult as time goes by, following the staff redundancies at the company's centres in London, New York and Dubai, Atkinson said.

"The more time that goes by, the more difficult it will be to reach a sale of any kind," Atkinson said. "If anything needs to happen, it has to be in the next week, if it happens at all."

Better read your history books again.
Once the BA Concorde operation was re-organized in 1982/83, it consistently made a profit almost to the end in 2003, without subsidies.
Not a huge one.... there were not enough aircraft and not enough flights, but the operation definitely more than paid for itself!

Air France was a different story.

The 3rd party being reffered to was the CAA :mad:

The CAA were not satisfied with the funding being offered to rescue the airline and thus were blocking the application - hence forcing the airline into this position.

They are living upto there monkier... Cease All Aviation

Great shame, good luck to all crews looking for seats now...

ChristiaanJ/411A:

Concorde never repaid its development costs, which is what 411A might be thinking of. However, as ChristiaanJ says, the BA operation, once those costs were written off, was definitely profitable.

However, I bet it would be struggling now, given the cost of fuel. That's what really clobbered it back in the '70s.

Not any more. Air Transport Intelligence is quoting CEO today that all attempts to find funding have stopped and S'jet is to be wound up.

"Wodka", the third party was also the aircraft owners who were also not happy with the deal being offered.
Also "QUOTE". Lawrence Hunt has abandoned efforts to save the airline following the collapse of a rescue deal on Friday.

I don't think the CAA could have done anything else, if the medium term funding wasn't there then they couldn't let it restart, simple as. They want to avoid an airline starting up again then running out of money again in 5 months which is a real possibility without the money in the bank.

370 staff for 3 aircraft and oil at $139 a barrell with no hedging, would you buy it ?.The business model was flawed at the outset.Good luck to all who have lost their positions and hope they find work soon.

I usually see that confusion....
The development costs were financed by the governments, and BAC/Aérospatiale, on the basis of a break-even of about 150 aircraft, IIRC.
British Airways and Air France were only two of the clients, and it was not their business to recoup the entire development costs!!
Admittedly they got a couple of aircraft cheap, in the end, even if it wasn't the £1 each as a certain RB likes to pretend, but in the long run that was not very relevant compared to the operating costs.

It was 9/11, the Iraq war, the rise in maintenance cost, and a few other items that led to the premature retirement in 2003, even before the oil went through the roof. The $140 barrel of today would just have been the last nail in the coffin.

Yes/no. She didn't stop flying until thirty years later!

silvermuppet
 

Have another read of my post, and there the answer will be found. :ok: