which ones do you predict?

I predict:

Cardiff
Doncaster
Dusseldorf
Glasgow

A small(ish) trimmed has happened in Manchester to Southampton, for this winter, with flights down from 7 to 5 per day.

Also peak winter 2018 week movements for Flybe at Manchester are down by 88.

I know from current insiders that the DUS base is a crewing nightmare. They don't have enough crew to man it without positioning in multiple crew from BHX on a daily basis to operate DUS baaed rotations. It must be costing them thousands.

BHX crew are also regularly being taxied to/from Cardiff for 3 or 4 days tours as they are short there too. In fact it is rare for cabin crew at any base to get a monthly roster that doesn't include positioning (flight, taxi or hire car) somewhere and staying in a hotel for 2 or 3 nights at (great) company expense.

Operationally they need a more robust and realistic schedule in place with more slack to allow catch up when delays happen. Crewing is reactive not proactive (in fact as everyone is at BE) and the company as a whole seems to only look as far forward as the next 24 hours.

They need to cut bases and trim the fat.

As a former insider I can tell you that everyone at BE is passionate about doing a good job and the right thing and truly wants to airline to succeed and grow. Everyone however is let down by poor strategic decisions made by a management that is very distant from the flying operation and a management culture that does not encourage creativity, personal opinion or 'thinking outside the purple box'. Management do not have a clear strategy in place for the future as they don't know (or can't agree on) what airline they want BE to be. As an employee this makes for a very frustrating workplace environment,

These are just my personal opinions based on my (mostly happy) time working at BE.

That's not trimming until aircraft leave and crew base and maint is dissolved to other locations. That's only reducing the loss of uneconomic sectors. The fixed costs will remain the same just the fuel bill will be lowered.

SOU is unlikely to be closed as its a strong link to SE traffic with very good rail connection.

I was expecting Cardiff to come up on the replies. Yet i have been told that Flybe are very happy with their Cardiff base.
My prediction would be Glasgow, Aberdeen and Dusseldorf. Will be interesting to see what happens and hopefully whatever happens Flybe will carry on as a company and go onto thrive!

Yes , but they're not very happy with their Edinburgh base !

What's wrong with Edinburgh in terms of financial performance?

As a user of GLA I wouldn't be bothered about any cuts because Loganair would fill the gaps.

maybe not but I'd have thought that Edinburgh would be more important to them

Good point mwm991... in fact bmi regional, Loganair, Blue Islands and Eastern are probably all waiting on Flybe to go under for exactly that reason.

They have said they have been happy with quiet a few other bases that are now shut even after swapping aircraft types there and training all the crew up to fly the new type sometimes less than a year after they heavily invested in training.

You will just have to wait and see what the financial types decide. punters tend to always favour there local base and think everything is great there, mind you so do the crew. But when it comes down to seat yield and competition the bean counters will win.

I do have empathy for the pax but after having several mates be made redundant by flybe then weeks later be asked to return (which thankfully they refused as they were just so pissed off with them) what ever happens it will cause a great deal of stress to a vast number of family's which won't be affected by if their base closes or not. From the last round of redundancy's I think everyone I know is pretty glad they left. Several operators are now sniffing out the crew both on jet and Q400 and also technicians. It could be they have no option with some bases if they have to many people move on. I have already stuck 3 cv's through of Q400 Captains to other mates who are looking for heavy TP drivers. A reluctance to move the family or go sideways to ATR will be the handbrake for most. Now Ryanair have thrown a carrot out for PIC time quickly on a 737-800 for Q400 PIC then it maybe carrot enough to abandon ship.

This is all speculation on my part.

Is there no way the remaining E95’s could be handed back to the lessor early with a financial agreement being struck? I’m sure there are early term penalties but this might be more cost effective than keeping hold of, just a thought!

Id imagine they'll ditch Glasgow long before Edinburgh, even despite their unhappiness with current arrangements at the airport. More inbound tourism and business traffic, so I'd guess money will talk.

Any thoughts on the Isle of Man? Currently they have Stobart Air on a wet lease operating MAN LPL and BHX. They plan to re open the base from 1 Apr next year. Some insiders who want to relocate home have yet to have their basing letters.

From BHD thread

Flybe LPLlooks like it is gone from end of December??

So your suggestion is to shrink the airline, thereby increasing the already uncompetitive costs, increase their presence at big airports and expose themselves further to competition. At the same time you want to sell off profitable parts of the company? The ATR's at SK are on a white-label deal, if they are not making money on those, there is no hope for the airline - white label and ACMI flying can be highly profitable.
Do you really think flyBe could obtain line maintenance and training cheaper on the open market? How much guaranteed business would they have to give to the new owners? With the level of expertise flyBe has built up wit the Q400 and E-Jets I think outsourced maintenance could increase their costs, reduce fleet reliability or both.

I agree that flyBe needs to focus. It might be that smaller, regional bases with limited competition make sense. The reality is without the numbers everyone will cheer for their local airport. Domestic connections at MAN/BHX/GLA/EDI seem unattractive to me, low yield, long journey times - let that market to trains and coaches. Subsidised flying at CWL and DSA is a game out of the FR playbook. these different things can work - but with focus. Is flyBe a local airline for local people or a low cost airline with ruthless revenue generation that happens to fly 70-120 sear aircraft?

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How easy would it be to get out of the project blackbird deals at CWL and DSA? I thought they were 10 year agreements.

Using CWL as an example, are only operated from there;
VCE MXP MUC


How well does MAN and SOU do as a hub? Could a better hub setup be created in order to feed onto quiter routes to mainland Europe within 2 hours?
I've looked at BEs route network in the past and the German/French etc routes are randomly operated from some Airports and not others.

Is their route network strong enough or just randomly picked? Using CWL as an example, MUC FCO and VCE are only operated from CWL, nowhere else. Given they have a number of jets in the fleet, are they being wasted being used on domestic routes where they could be building up the network on longer routes from other airports?
SOU has quite a variety of routes, especially in France. It would be interesting to know how many people connect through SOU onto these routes? Similarly at CWL with the above routes which are offered as connections when booking from Airports like BHD and EDI

I'm not sure what the issues are at EDI but I have read that Airport charges are starting to play a part for other Airlines. If that's the case, could they build a route network out of EDI but with less aircraft based there, thus saving on overnight parking charges if they can get a good deal at cheaper regional Airports?

I'm not anti EMA but no one seems to have made a success of true scheduled routes from EMA. The airport has relied in a limited way on viable non-sun routes by true LoCos and on sun routes by both LoCos and Inclusive tour operators. I doubt that would work.

Does anyone know if LHR is profitable - if not that would be one of my first targets.

East Midlands growth has been stunted by the development at Doncaster and Birmingham. It does well to handle 4.5m pax every year! Location of that airport perfect for cargo but not high yielding pax.

I think they are gradually choking at SOU tbh, the new deal they got after using BOH as leverage, as some what back fired on them.

If and it's a big they were taken over would the rights to HEATHROW pass to the new owners or lapse ,?

If flyBe were taken over by an airline/group other than IAG then yes, they would.

Can't really agree with any of that i'm afraid and Saad will most definitely not return.

Yes the E195s need to go and the sooner the better. The rest of the fleet though is a pretty perfect fit for their operations IF of course utilised in the most efficient way.

As for maintenance, it's not always the most cost effective way to outsource everything as much as some would have you believe. If anything, BE should be looking at bringing more of their A/B checks back in-house. I believe MAEL in BHX are currently taking care of that. There's also money to be made with the Flybe Airline Services operation with other Bombardier, BAE/Avro and Embraer operators often heading to them in Exeter for work.

​I agree. The Eastern Airways / Flybe franchise really hasn't been used to the best of it's potential. Eastern could really have used the power of the BE brand and online selling services with opening up new routes as well it automatically expanding the Flybe network. However, as another poster has mentioned, it seems they themselves have been struggling with crewing issues. Perhaps had they planned more prospects and had more work generated at an earlier stage of the franchise, these issues may not have been the case with crew seeing a more positive and ambitious future...

As for bases, If it wasn't for the LHR route, ABZ could have been a contender to close as a BE base. Flybe operations could continue on based Eastern aircraft and away based Flybe aircraft. The only other realistic contender as a base closure would be DUS. The only benefit of this base is the early morning arrival into LCY which it too is competing directly with BA Cityflyer (ironically operated by Eastern Airways). All other routes to and from DUS can be operated with UK-based aircraft.

There's a lot of things BE need to work on to get itself into ship shape efficient order, but it needs to do so now, much more quickly! The roll out of the new Amadeus systems has been a start, but that itself is progressing rather slowly. Increasing ancillary revenues through the booking engine and operating model should also be looked. Other than the checked-in baggage charges they must be the least pushy airline when it comes to extra fee's and service offerings. Finally and following on from that, they need to aim to be a high quality low-fare regional airline. Something they are trying to be but also seem scared to fully admit to as they continue to cling on to a lot of legacy. Aircraft utilisation, old fashioned scheduling methods coupled with old fashioned overheads such as aircraft cleaning during turnarounds etc all need looking into. Its needed to make the operation much leaner and a more efficient operation if they are to survive as a sizeable operation.

Cabin crew do clean the aircraft on out of base turnrounds expect as far as I recall MXP. But cleaners do come on at base - so as a BHX based crew member on a BHX-GLA-BHX-HAM-BHX 4 sector day you would clean at GLA and HAM only. Payments are made per out of base clean to Cabin Crew.

Aberdeen Base
 

Eastern J41 at Aberdeen would not have the capacity for the routes Ex Aberdeen. Flybe built up the LCY route however Eastern are doing their best to finish the route operating the service via Newcastle.

The suggestion as mentioned was based on a mix of away based BE aircraft and based Eastern Airways aircraft which compromises of JS41 and larger Saab2000 aircraft (alongside the ATR ops of course).

Also since when has the ABZ-LCY-ABZ service been operated via NCL?

It isn't, though it has been rumoured.

I heard that Flybe people believe in keeping the utilisation low because they are a 'different' type of airline!

I counted five aircraft in Birmingham on the ground last Thursday - not even being touched for a turnaround which I thought was quite telling!

Utilisation does appear to be very low, some aircraft doing one return short trip a day.
BA Cityflyer make their E jets work hard, during the summer week-ends once London City winds down, their E jets are working day & night to bucket & spade destinations from the regions. Winter week-ends they're heavily deployed on ski flights also from various regions.
Why aren't the Flybe E jets working into the night from BHX/MAN/SOU on bucket and spade flights? are they really scared of upsetting EZY/RYR/J2 ? Not held Cityflyer back, their flights might not be as cheap as the other LoCos but have proved to be popular.
Something is wrong with their business model for sure.