Thanks Ryanair1 for posting that.
 

What savvy businessman would invest any money in a 23 year old who has no track record, experience or training in management (let alone finishing anything simple...), especially the sums required to make a successful airline? :confused:

What were the journos thinking when they bought Halstead's bullsh@t??? :ugh:

They were thinking about selling newspapers, all they ever think about. You know the old cliche, "If it bleeds, it leads." Substitute brags for bleeds in this case.

I suspect this is just rags-to-riches spillover from the popular reality TV genre. MH probably saw SuBo and so many others propelled to fame that he decided to dust off his old AlphaOne business plan.

I actually don't think he set out to defraud. I'll bet he's naive enough to think he could have made a go of it. But the day he dreamed up Will Gilligan and the day he said there was strong financial backing, whichever came first, was the day it will be said that he crossed the line into fraud by misrepresenting the truth.

By the way, to those doing ticket price maths, £49 was an introductory fare. I checked a few dates trying to see how many seats were sold and the fare was about £168 each way if I put in more than four people.

The road to evil is paved with good intentions...
 

I think thats fair to say. However, despite his intentions he did committ fraud.

Fair point - the website read to me as though all seats were £49 in the introductory period, which meant in my view subsidised ticket prices, presumably from the marketing budget, to promote the route.

Has any legal action been taken to stop Martin Failsted from trying again and frauding even more people?

No doubt he'll marry his American fiancé and do the same over there......

....or change his name to Will Gilligan. :}

More like Gill Willigan as the previous one is now as famous as his own name!

Update
 

Pilot loses £15,000 after airline collapses |

Good luck Pete :ok:

he is a dodgy con artist! he should name his next airline CON-AIR! his american gf is smitten with his accent i guess. with his prepay credit card.........lol......... he is great at spending other peoples money!

BUZZ702

Not sure if many people will see this as a laughing matter?

(for those who don't know - 'lol' is text-speak for 'laugh out loud')

don't get me wrong i feel terrible for those blokes he ripped off. i shouldn't have lol'd.

he's a piece of work

Well I thought it was funny:ok:

Due diligence should be used as standard in the airline world. Especially by anyone considering P2F.

Good luck to the guys involved, but I doubt they will ever see that cash again:=

Agreed, fascinating story from beginning to end. I could have seen myself being sucked in, desperation to get a real piloting job in today's climate etc, I can really empathise with those three, daft as it looks from looking in on the outside now with all the facts. Hope they get it back.

IJM - bit sanctimonious? Maybe not that 'funny' - but no-one died. Buzz was 'LOL-ing' at his/her own comment.

I also have huge sympathy for the pilots caught up in this. Given the way the industry is allowed to run recruitment it's no surprise that some wannabes, all of whom are highly educated people who know the risks, shell out vast amounts of their own money in the hope of getting a job.

In my view this sort of thing should be illegal. Consumers get protection from cowboy operators through ATOL etc. The government thinks endless expansion of air transport is a great idea. They should step in to provide tighter regulation of pay-to-fly schemes etc.

NS

That's debatable!

PTF is an interesting topic and one that is raging in 2 other thread right now:


http://www.pprune.org/terms-endearme...-aviation.html

http://www.pprune.org/terms-endearme...ng-j-curd.html


With PTF rife in the airlines it was always going to be only a matter of time before it hits other areas and is exploited, in this case by MH and through his VE facade. Others could well follow. The GA sector could be next making PTF universal throughout the industry.

There are some interesting points made in both of the above threads and suggested actions to prevent it spreading.

Just think, if the first flight of Varsity Express had been today instead of the 1st of March, some of the journos who were originally taken in might well have been comparing it the the Panorama spaghetti tree spoof.

However, I think I've worked out what was written on every single page of the robust business plan Mr Halstead boasted of...

"Something will turn up"

Yeah, like the police. ;)

Plt +ve:Sorry to say you're well out of date. Pilots flying for no pay in at least one GA operator I know for some time.
NS