Fly Kiss
 

New start-up flying between Lorient and Lyon in France, replacing Eastern Airways.
I've had a look at the website, but info on them seems a little brief. Anyone know anything about them ? Seem to be a trading name of Enhance Aero and have a link to Slovenian SI Avia, but not quite sure what the link is

They are a long established company based, IIRC, at Clermont-Ferrand. I seem to recall that they have also plans to open routes from Clermont-Ferrand. They have a handful of ERJ145 at their disposal.

never begun or already stopped ?

I am sure a fly kiss liveried aircraft was parked next to us at LIG the other week. Possibly Emb 145.

Never start

It does exist : currently on CFE apron in front of Enhance hangar... but the line...

EMB-145 F-HFKG was flying between Limoge and Lyon in FlyKiss cls and using a Challair callsign in April

Possibly a charter flight...

Limoges/Lyon normally operated by Chalair.

Switch from B1900 to E145 would be surprising

Looking at FR24 it appears to run several times a day, usually on Atr-42's

Chalair effectively seems to operate 3 ATR42 from Lease Fly

Could it be possible that they might start. Planned flights to LTN seem ambitious and I though an airline with a small plane like this might be thinking of Southend.(E145)

F-HFKG EMB145 been parked at Bournemouth for last few days after doing charter from PRG
Photo on https://m.flickr.com/photos/leeweston/29569298472

Flights are due to start on 07 November. As this is just 2 weeks away, EU261 starts to become active in the event FlyKiss flights are cancelled or heavily delayed.
For small startup airlines, it is not unknown for an airline to put lots of routes on sale, wait for bookings to come in, and then modify schedules so that just the routes with reasonably healthy passenger demand are flown and avoid the airline going bust.

Anyone have any thoughts as to whether thing really will go ahead with FlyKiss and whether their schedule will be sustainable ?

Heard operations due to start this Nov as reflected on their website. Recently recruited some crews to operate the schedule. Rumour is they are looking to expand further next year.

They already delayed ops once for some reason or another. Until they start on the 7th then we'll see how things pan out. At the moment, think they are doing charters.

Flew from Clermont-Ferrand with FlyKiss (not on launch day)
49 seat E145 which had 8 fare paying passengers. Yes, 16 % load factor. Ground staff at Clermont-Ferrand, the main base for FlyKiss, hinted that loads have been consistently less than healthy.
Service on board was however very good.

The parent company, SiAvia, can probably cope for a while, and based on FR24 they seem to have been pretty rigorous about always operating flights since launch date, but I'm guessing commercial pressures may soon influence the flight schedule.

It's a difficult month to start ops, particularly to/from provincial France.

That's a very low Load Factor. But at least they made a start and didn't delay the ops again.
Hmmmmmmm, see what happens after a few months........

As mentioned by robbie1973, FlyKiss are ending all scheduled flights on 27 May
Press reports show they had 15,000 pax over 1,200 flights using a 49-seat E145, which equates to a 26 % load factor. Company had hoped for 100,000 pax per year or a little bit under 50,000 pax by now - presumably pax numbers were about a third of their original forecasts

Credit to them for trying, and credit also for knowing when to stop and have an orderly wind down of operations

Can't help but think that starting in October wasn't the best idea , especially the French regional links to the UK.
Sadly the summer forward bookings haven't hit expectations but at least they can hopefully revert back to ad hoc flights again.
Difficult for start ups these days!