It’s an interesting read. It looks like some sort of audit was done by the CAA and they found the safety breaches. Doubt if we will ever find out what they were. Rightly or wrongly that’s how I read it.

They (management) had a captive market a royally buggered it up. Now it’s clear the CAA didn’t have much faith in them either.

I think I’d agree. Isn’t this more likely a reaction by the CAA to the fact that following entry into administration and having made those responsible for internal audit and safety redundant, this in itself resulted in the safety concerns highlighted. There is nothing to suggest that this applies to the business when it was still trading.

Horse, stable, bolted ?

Contracts are out to ferry all the Q400s into Europe for store. They will join the large number of LGW airframes already parked up.

Any idea how they will be crewed?

Where into Europe are they heading to be parked ?


cs

Presumably one of the big ferry companies will pick up the contract?

All the LGW a/c went to Bratislava

Just read all of this..................

https://assets.ey.com/content/dam/ey...-proposals.pdf

Having watched these events, from the inside, for nearly 10 years it felt like an accident report. I always wondered why Saad left so suddenly but a possible explanation is that he saw the the airline was heading for bankruptcy and proposed another huge reorganisation. The board wouldn't agree so off he went and their only idea was to appoint Christine O-W.
She was clearly unable to do anything meaningful hence those dreadful FY18/19 figures - which I had not seen before.

The bit that I still don't fully understand is where did all the revenue go? Flights were busy with some routes regularly full (every seat occupied) and no one would claim that crews were overpaid. Was just the EMB leases? I don't see that directors fees of £2 million is particularly high in relation to the turnover.

All in all a very sad end to a great "purple family" - you were a great bunch :ok:

Shame about the management...........

Presumably one of the big ferry companies will pick up the contract?

Not necessarily so. These aircraft are owned by multiple organisations and so more than one ferry company is likely to be selected.

Quote:

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Flybe administrators fight to retain carrier’s operating licence

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UK regional carrier Flybe’s administrators intend to appeal to the government in a bid to retain the airline’s operating licence, warning that a sale of the business would become improbable if the licence is revoked.

https://www.flightglobal.com/airline...138191.article

Sounds like an administrator trying to generate some extra fees for themselves because there might still be some extra cash left in the business after they get paid off for work done so far - or the administrators want to cover their backsides against being sued by creditors for not having ticked the right boxes

I think more likely than not their may be certain contractual terms with debtors and or insurance provisions that may only be valid in the event of an active AOC, with penalties if licence is revoked.

But it is ridiculous that across the US and most of Europe, airlines can apply for some degree of bankruptcy protection to at least try fix things whilst maintaining an AOC.

To be fair they had years to try to fix things with radical changes that was needed, instead, since Saad left they just sat there and did next to nothing. This is most likely why the government didn't bail them out because in 18 months time they'll have been coming back for yet more handouts to add to the litany of handouts they'd received over the last 17 years.

https://www.flightglobal.com/mro/fly...138205.article

Wow! Past management should (but probably wont) feel ashamed on how bad this situation got.

The numbers (as also contained in the doc shared by ETOPS last week) are indeed truly shameful and (sadly) indicate why the Govt was not willing to intervene.

Slightly worrying (for what I would say was considered to be safe/professional operation) that the "return of the aircraft has been “hampered” by the fleet’s not being
in the condition required, the administrators state, with a need for a “significant amount” of asset swaps to restore them", or is that just because nearly all of the a/c
concerned have been sat on the ground for nearly 2 months with the minimum required attention? (with perhaps a few exceptions)

I don't believe it has any reflection on any unsafe practices; it's not worded brilliantly. It's more that engines get swapped around the fleet during their lifespan with an airline and when the aircraft are returned to lessors in an orderly fashion, the correct engines are back on the correct aircraft for the handover. However, with the airline suddenly being grounded overnight - engines are not on the correct aircraft, so need to be swapped before they can be returned to the lessors. A good operation wouldn't ground an aircraft because its engine needed to be sent off for servicing - they'd pop a different engine on and the aircraft returns to service, which is why they're all on different airframes. It's a good way of balancing out hours on airframes and engines in a normal operation and all airlines will do it. Just means there's some work to do to get everything back the way it should be.

If an aircraft is owned by lessor A, they're not going to want their aircraft back with lessor B's engines.

Those financial numbers - assuming they are trading losses and not the "gone concern" losses - are truly shocking. By that, I mean that when an airline defaults under a lease, the lease contains a term that all remaining payments until the end of that lease agreement become due and payable. If you had 50 aircraft at $100k/month each, your lease rental outgoings this month would normally be $5m. If you ceased trading and each lease had 5 years left to run, the lessors would suddenly consider that you owed $300m and so all of a sudden, the amount owing when you've gone bust is several multiples of what you'd have paid out if you were still trading. If the £215m loss is before any of those penalty payments were claimed, that's unbelievably bad.

In terms of the aircraft, the situation is not as shocking as it sounds. Within a large fleet of aircraft, it is inevitable that things like engines, props and gear legs will be swapped around over the life of the many aircraft in the fleet. Aircraft A might be delivered with engine serial numbers 1 and 2 installed; aircraft B has engine serial numbers 3 and 4, and the airline has a spare engine number 5. By the end of two years, you'd probably find that aircraft A has engines 2 and 5 fitted, aircraft B has 1 and 4 and engine 3 is sitting as the spare. However, each engine technically "belongs" to the aircraft with which it was delivered.

When working towards your handback dates, you'd routinely try to swap engines and major components within the fleet so that each aircraft arrives at its end-of-lease date with the right engines, props etc installed. At least, that is what you should be doing. In the case of Flybe where everything came to a sudden stop, it means that the components would not be attached to the right aircraft. If just one leasing company then insists on having Aircraft A redelivered with engines 1 and 2, and they won't accept engines 2 and 5 as fitted, you're into a major fleet-wide exercise of having to swap all of the out-of-place bits back. That's what has been going on here. It does not automatically mean that the aircraft were in a poor condition - I'm sure that they were not, but it just means that they were not in line with the required conditions at the end of the lease - due to the abrupt termination of it.

There were some regulatory findings and issues, so I've been told by people very close to it. To the best of my knowledge, those aren't the same as the issues being referred to here which are really about the leasing companies exercising their contractual rights to the property that they own - and perhaps one or two being precious in the process about what they will and won't accept.

Sorry - BOH, you beat me to it as I was typing. We're saying the same thing.

Appreciate the insight from those who responded, thanks. I work in IT and a lot of the "tin" humming away in Data Centre's these days is leased. Same kind of things go on (bits get moved around, robbed and ultimately replaced etc).

I saw on a FB group used by some staff at SOU that a few of the Dashes there have had some work done (there was a pic of one hangared, I think in the Signature hangar, which I was surprised to see), so I guess things are starting to move?