[QUOTE=RogueOne;10908273]I have some magic beans you might be interested in.

No new carrier starts off profitable from day one. Going in against Loganair on say MAN-xyz, the incumbent will have no choice but to fight tooth and nail for survival, hence no easy path to profitability. The notion that there's a large enough niche for a new flybe flying a large fleet of clapped out DHDs is just nonsense. Or maybe they'll order a new fleet of ATR72s with a side order of shiney A220s? They wil need to be very well capitalised to survive a couple of years of massive losses as a newbie flying on the brand of a famously bankrupt and frankly unloved carrier. The major problem of being unable to expand into the easyJet / Ryanair space and being up against stronger local brands like Loganair, Blue Islands and Aurigny remains. Any zombie Flybe had no USP to market.

Flybe Mk II will have massive advantages.

They will not have just dragged themselves through the worst crisis in aviation history with all the massive losses
They will have massive amounts of pilots and crew keen to get back in the air
They will have airports desperate to see some flights moving and be able to plan their routes with historic but accurate route data
There will be no shortage of aircraft and maintenance facilities to be had at favourable rates
They can choose when to launch, ie when a comeback looks sustainable

I hope to see them in the sky in 18 months or so.

This thread is heading for Jet Blast! Some real pie in the sky thinking on here.

There will be no Jets or desire to become Ryanair or easyJet - thats where it went to rats last time with the Jets.

[QUOTE=Skipness One Foxtrot;10908373]Just for the record #4378 has become distorted. I have been credited with someone else's post. :eek: Skipness, I'm in agreement with you; it's someone else who isn't! :ok:

Only two words to remember..."hedge fund".

I could pick on several posts here, but...

They have a brand which was so toxic after the hand baggage fiasco that they were having to plan a full re-brand before they went bust.
The market is shot to pieces with several former cash-cows like BHX-EDI suffering badly from passengers driving and not flying.
Of the routes that might still work, many have Loganair, Blue Islands, Eastern or easyJet parked on them.
Flybe ran out of cash in January 2020, long before Coronavirus was an everyday word in our language, then staggered on until March.
They lost an incredible £200m in 2019.

It was a basketcase, remains a basketcase, and will be a bottomless money-pit for the investors behind it. If it gets airborne after due CAA scrutiny, it will be a triumph of vanity over reality.

Can anyone actually think of a bankrupt airline relaunch which has gone well? I'm struggling to come up with one.

I'm beginning to wonder if the quoted Lucien Farrell of Cyrus and the dreamer Jason Unsworth of Atmosphere International are somehow related.

You can have all the cheap aircraft you want but you still have to fuel and maintain them. Staff, navigation and ground expenses are still there as are a degree of overhead. Even more fundamentally, most of the (I assume) profitable routes have already been backfilled by competitors. Throw in continued Covid-related tomfoolery and you have a recipe for unmitigated disaster. This outfit has not got a cat in hells chance of making it in my opinion.

Jezzzzzz this year has been so bad for aviation and this is one piece of good news . Let’s try and be positive and see what happens

And a base would be at ???

Unless the govt are going to support them

They weren't a cheap ticket and they still were losing money. This time around they'd be up against the LCC's willing to fly domestics against them because they have aircraft and crew sat around doing little. There are relatively few airports where you can't operate a lightly loaded 737/320 and the ones that are too small are already served by the likes of Logan and Stobart. The likes of easy already operate profitably on routes like LGW-JER BRS-IOM BFS-GLA. Absolutely nothing stopping them operating domestics out of CWL EXT BOH LBA NCL MAN BHX SOU NQY NWI. As long as they break even they may as well use their spare capacity to feed into their larger hubs like LGW LTN BRS MAN to facilitate onward to travel to the huge orange European network. Ditto Ryanair via STN DUB.

Outside of our aviation bubble is Flybe that strong a brand? It was Jersey European until well into this century. Most news headlines about FlyBe involve either falling share prices, doubts about its future and then its collapse. It was always a confused brand, was I supposed to be low cost? U.K. Regional businessman's commute? Family holiday to Malaga? As a brand it seemed to have a lot less pedigree and affection than Monarch and I don't see anybody putting much of a value on that brand.

at the end of the day this is a vulture fund. Not a long term investor looking to build a viable airline business. Don't get your hopes up.

And with one voice the deluded supporters of the scheme cried, "Exeter!" Why, we have been told that the aircraft are already painted. ;) What could possibly go wrong next time round?

This is getting as circular as the old "Flybe are going bust!", "No they aren't!!" discussions. :rolleyes:

I think we all know the answer to that ...

I can think of one. British Air Ferries went into administration in 1988 with debts of over £20 million and emerged a year later with new owners as the first British airline to do so. By 1990 BAF was recording a profit of over £1 million per year and continued profitably throughout much of the 1990s finally collapsing in 2001 in the aftermath of 9/11 as British World Airways.

Flybe & possible insanity with definition...

Insanity = Doing (saying) the same thing,over & over again,but expecting different results.

Same applies to all airlines. The industry isn't needed.

I take exception to the view expressed by jmccrew and others that a reborn Flybe would be “good news”. Not such good news if you work for Loganair, Blue Islands, etc. As the industry starts to recover either due to a vaccine, improved testing or whatever, the absolute last thing it needs is a revamped Flybe instigating market share wars on routes such as SOU GLA/EDI causing grief all round before probably exiting the market again. This corpse should stay buried, not exhumed.

God_of_Fire

It was Jersey European until 2001, then British European, thrn Flybe from 2003. It was profitable for more years then less. Then Jim French did the disastrous deal with Embraer. Saad Hammad wss brought im to sort the mess out, and did a good job, thrn Laffin and the non exec directors sacked him, and his replacement Christine Oumieres-Widener did a pretty good wrecking job on the company

The reality is (IF) Flybe 2.0 comes to life then its going to be a very very small, concentrated operation, most likely only with a handful of aircraft operating from a couple of bases linking the regions. A MAN or BHX base would be sensible as the aircraft could then link North, South, Ireland and Scotland. Yes they would be competing against (potentially) larger and hungrier companies like Loganair, Easyjet and even maybe IAG (in some form). If they are sensible they would work with the other operators, code sharing with who ever will have them, Blue Islands and Loganair have already got their code share arranged and working, Eastern and Aurigny are also putting one together.

Theres plenty of aircraft ready with possibly lower lease costs, will they go for the Dash over the ATR, who knows, after all its a clean sheet, the ATR is the accountants Friend and NAC et al will no doubt have many airframe ready and waiting. The biggest cost change will be the crewing aspect, no unions, a small crew compliment working on (no doubt) significantly lower wages, most likely more in line with the likes of Eastern, Loganair and Blue Islands.

Flybe 2.0 could be fantastic, maybe like the other operators who stepped in, they will provide a more local brand, a more local feel operating some more niche routes, hopefully Flybe 2.0 won't look to compete with LM, T3, BI but work with them, it would be interesting to see whether they choose Team Loganair / Blue Islands or go to the other side with Eastern / Aurigny. One thing is for certain though, Flybe 2.0 won't be the same and they certainly won't be picking up where they left off! The world has changed.

Ha ha ha ha. If you are relying on Simon Calder’s advice you are in trouble.

A key part of planning a business is market research. There is almost no market to research at the minute. Established, well financed airlines are in survival mode. Fares are on the deck. All across the U.K. airports and handling agents have cut services back. A new airline will have to negotiate with these entities which are also in low risk / survival mode to get them to hire more staff to service potential passengers which may or may not materialise. These companies will not negotiate on the cheap when they are already bleeding money.

There is much more to launching an airline than painting aircraft and hiring pilots and cabin crew. Anyone planning to launch an airline without waiting to see what the landscape looks like in 18 months is playing an outrageously high risk game with investors’ money.

So long as those investors can see the same bright opportunity as you can, and are happy to pay you a nice fee to do all this research and negotiating, jobs a good 'un :ok:

Flybe didnt fail due to one reason, it failed due to many. Maybe Flybe 2.0 if taken as a clean sheet will succeed, if the incoming management have learnt from history it could be successful. Costs will be lower and if they're not, they're doing it wrong! Crew costs can be significantly reduced, no doubt in line with Eastern / Loganair / Blue Islands, they will certainly in the short term not have the union aspect to deal with, allowing easier management of crew and costs.

Most other costs also reduced, including fuel, (the dash 8 gets even cheaper to operate). If going down the clean sheet route they also have the chance to pick the best aircraft for the operation, do they need Dash 8's or can the ATR work? Do they need 70+ seats or can a mix of ATR42/72 work? NAC et al will have many aircraft available and as the new operation is planned to be small, they'll only need a handful of aircraft initially. Plenty of second / third / fourth hand turboprops sitting around waiting to fly!

The only thing for sure is that Flybe 2.0 won't be picking up where it left off, its a new world and a world that now has stronger competition who are teaming up to make things work. Loganair + Blue Islands V Aurigny + Eastern seem to be the set up from the latest news on Codeshares and partnerships. Who will Flybe pick to get into bed with? The power house from Scotland (with very stable and progressive management) combined with the Jersey Government backed Blue Islands or Guernsey's state owned regional airline (with more aircraft than it knows what to do with) combined with the East Coast local government vanity project knows to many as Eastern Airways. Interesting times to say the least!

Aspire are quietly renewing LPCs on a lot of the Dash pilots so there are actually more than enough Ex Flybe crew to jump straight into the Q400s and fly them. Fingers crossed that it comes of and we see them back in the air soon.

One big saving and highly unusual aspect of this is Aspire Flight Training. A group of the airlines training Captains has been quietly revalidating the licences and SIM checks of many of the Q400 pilots. Getting former MPLs converted to ATPLs and other excellent work. Its virtually unheard of and shows the family spirit and positive attitudes of those Trainers and crew. I sincerely hope Flybe 2.0 contracts Aspire for Crew Training at least initially. So, one of the major initial costs of starting up is virtually absent.

I wish all my former colleagues the very best of luck getting back into the air!

I really hope these investors have a new business model
up their sleeve because the flybe model did not work for the last 15 years of their existence. What would be a travesty would be another airline based on the same broken business model, adding unprofitable capacity to the market and thereby trashing the yields of the remaining regional carriers. I would be delighted to see a sustainable organisation emerge and re-employ those many who relied on regional aviation for their livelihoods - but it needs to be that: sustainable and not relying on cash infusions every 24 months from private investors.

Personally, if I had a hundred million burning a hole in my pocket that I absolutely needed to invest in a regional U.K. operator, I would be probably be looking for equity in one of the established regional carriers that actually have a record of balancing their books. At the very least I would be looking to poach some commercial talent from one of these organisations for my new venture.

“Personally, if I had a hundred million burning a hole in my pocket that I absolutely needed to invest in a regional U.K. operator, I would be probably be looking for equity in one of the established regional carriers that actually have a record of balancing their books. At the very least I would be looking to poach some commercial talent from one of these organisations for my new venture”


How to become a millionaire in the Airline industry?...Start as a Billionaire 😜

The business model is pretty straight forward. Without the fat, the pensions and the leasing cost of those Jets, Flybe would have made a profit every year for the last twenty. By starting a lot smaller, and containing costs, they have every chance. The Aircraft, is a 78 seater with very low direct operating costs. It can operate those intermediate loads an A3219 can't and a J41 can't. The ATR's available are old, second hand and slow. Q400 Crews are straining at the leash, and stamped up and current. it's a no brainer.

Also the costs are minimal UNTIL the right time. as an airline on paper, it is paying no leasing or employee costs right now. Nor will it until they start up. Others are hemorrhaging cash daily.

Best of luck to my former colleagues.

#Flybefamily.

Problems ran far deeper than lease costs. For years the company failed to match capacity to demand. A more disciplined approach to capacity and yield will be a decent start to a sustainable airline.

I was always baffled as to why they didn’t take a more aggressive approach to managing capacity (thereby driving down cost and driving up yield) on routes where they had no competition.

In their defence the capacity-to-demand management was a losing battle since the $5 Billion deal to sign the Embraers. Saad did a brilliant job of transferring most of the order to Republic Airways, but still had to accept 24 Q400 in return. He was upfront that these aircraft were surplus to capacity, and running them at a loss was better than accepting the E-Jets.

The ideal fleet would've been 30-40 Q400 and no E-Jets....Cyrus has the ability to manage this.

Can’t imagine any new startup will involve more than 10-15 airframes!

Snr - where would these 30 - 40 dash 8s operate exactly?

I wonder if they are expecting rivals not to survive the winter...

And all the advantages being quoted for a re-booted Flybe would apply to any other new startup who wants to come into the market

Quite possibly and would feel slightly aggrieved if they re-entered the UK regional market at the expense of those current carriers. Having made a pigs ear of the old company, shed thousands of jobs and written off all debts and liabilities, they swallow up airline/s that have worked hard to stay afloat during the pandemic and re-take core routes. I appreciate this is a dog eat dog world but just wouldn’t sit right with me. Long way to go however!

Bingo. I would even suggest that the ATR be a better aircraft due to the significantly lower fuel burn albeit Dashes might be easier to source and crew. I have no idea how Dash lease costs compare to ATR lease costs though.