Flybe share price has tanked to 33p today ahead of full year results announcement by Christine tomorrow. Investors not happy with performance with many speculating it will drop into the twentys tomorrow.

Sounds like a 78 seat Q400 to me.

I wonder if Flybe might want to modify its stock exchange listing to move from the main market to the smaller-company-focussed AIM instead ? They would possibly benefit from a lower regulatory burden and cheaper listing fees
The market cap of Flybe is below the average market cap of AIM

No seat map shows for me with Flybe?

Looking at the block times on ABZ-LSI it varies from 00:45 to 01:05.

Would guess 00:45 is the E170, 00:50 Saab 2000 and 01:05 J41?

Thumping loss for the full year .Tough times out there .

Source: SMW
Flybe plunged into the red in the year to the end of March despite a 13.4% increase in revenues to £707.4m.

Flybe had warned in March that it expected a small underlying loss before tax for the year, before IT write-downs of around £5-10m.

The group today posted an adjusted loss before tax of £(6.7)m, after IT write-downs of £4.8m.

It said this write-down was at the low end of its previous range, but it anticipated further IT costs of around £6m in 2017-18 relating to cancellation penalties on existing contracts.

Financial highlights

- Stable passenger yield at £70.20;

- 3.0ppts lower load factor to 69.6% reflecting the 12.3% increase in capacity;

- 2.0% increase in cost per seat to £53.74, but a 5.2% reduction at constant currency;

- Adjusted loss before tax of £6.7m (£5.5m profit in 2015/16);

- Reported loss after tax of £26.7m (£6.8m profit in 2015/16);

- Strong balance sheet with total cash of £124.3m, with net debt of £(64.0)m after the purchase of ten Q400 aircraft, previously on operating leases

There's without doubt a niche for Flybe to service but they are far too big to be able to meet it profitably. I've been banging this drum for years now ever since the BA Connect takeover (disaster). The route structure and fleet size doesn't just need trimming it needs slashing.

Not nearly enough.

The balance sheet isn't that strong .another volcano or similar black swan type thing and they'd be out of the game,in a couple of weeks .

I doubt the lenders would cough up any more facilities .

Having said that , BA's balance sheet isn't much better .

The really strong ones are FR and EZY strongest of all . Lowest debt ,most cash .Lowest liabilities.Guess that's the Stelios influence.

TangoAlphaD: They did, but they they quickly expanded again, including to some of the bases they'd just closed.

IIRC the first cuts were when they decided they would get rid of the E195s and stop using them until they found someone to take them, and the expansion was when they realised they weren't going to find anyone to take the E195s off them and decided to try and find routes that would at least meet marginal costs.

Steps need to be taken for sure, but if you "slash" you could endanger the "bread and butter" for Flybe, which is UK/close Europe high-frequency regional connections.

You do have to think, though, that if they can't make money in the current economic climate, they are never going to, which is shame, as the product (when I use it, mainly out of SOU) is pretty good.

If they can't make money on current oil prices, ...

I said this a long time ago but what do BE expect when they start opening bases at the likes of East Midlands, Doncaster/Sheffield and Cardiff.

I mean, Doncaster/Sheffield - Berlin? Really?? Cardiff - Berlin, Dusseldorf, Munich, Rome and Milan? ...........???????

Obviously these bases only exist because subsidies sweetened the deal, but I expect they are structured to reduce over time. There is a reason why no scheduled airline touches these airports (even FR and EZY). LHR is an utter folly as well. It is common knowledge that the landing fees are designed to deter small aircraft from operating. They need to get rid of the junglejets which were also an utter folly. When the time is right, maybe they could get a good deal on some CS100's from Bombardier seeing as they are already a loyal customer with the Qs?

BE needs to focus on its core airports of Southampton, Birmingham, Exeter, Manchester, Newcastle, Edingburgh and Glasgow. These airports are strategically well placed to serve the regions and surely it would be more efficient to continue to grow these rather than open up additional bases at neighboring airports?

Fly Be only serve long established and proven routes from EMA, previously operated by BMA/BMI then Baby I do believe. I can't see this type of route structure being a problem. Valid point about the DSA base though and some of the odd destinations they have tried.

Some of their EMA routes were also quite long standing easyJet routes, but weren't suitable for aircraft of that size.

The problem they have is that they can only ever occupy a space where there is a limited or constrained market. Any route carrying too many pax attracts the attention of the bigger boys.

Its worth saying that Volotea seem to be filling that regional niche in Southern Europe quite nicely. Granted, they are flying larger aircraft on lower frequency - but it shows there is a market for small and mid size cities.

Granted, yes - its very easy if doing well for the big boys to jump on. Flying to LCY/LHR shields them a little from that.

So what type of aircraft will eastern airways be using at GLA........do we know yet

In that sense it's a crying shame that BA don't / won't act as what a flag carrier should be, as they are the operator that could cope with a need to change between big and medium aircraft as necessary.

Instead everyone loses; something looks like a good medium aircraft route so someone different tries it out with a big aircraft, it doesn't work, it gets dropped and may or may not be picked up by the same person / someone different, there may or may not be some rinsing and repeating as necessary, and finally the route is dropped completely (perhaps because the passengers have lost track of all the changes and got p'd off).

The only good thing for flybe is that a partnership with someone, or perhaps the people, in the business of flying small aircraft means they might not be so liable to lose out to the same thing in the other direction; some of the routes they'll be dropping might have viable futures as Eastern's type of route.

I'm sure there may be CS100 opportunities in the UK, but I'm not sure who would be the people to try and take advantage of them. It's not flyBe as their finances don't allow it and their shareholders would never let them take a risk of similar appearances to that they took before with the E195s.

The only people with the finances to try it would be easyJet, but their shareholders also wouldn't be happy with it and it would be an awful fit with the business model that they're pursuing anyway. I wonder if the UK's CS100 opportunities might be taken individually by flag carriers other than BA?

DSA management stated that Flybe had signed a long term contract to base there. I wonder if there are penalties for coming out of that contract?