It was all quantyfied in the reports and accounts of Flybe plc which have now dissappeared and which i used to quote from often to try to quell idle specilation to no avail.
look ay my posting history on flybe.
In particular, look at my postings from April 2015 which discuss the deal done between Flybe, Republic Airlines and Embraer which saved Flybe millions

I spent 1.5 decades at Flybe and I've seen the actual lease costs of all their fleet which I'll keep to myself. Suffice to say whilst the E195 costs were staggering, the E175s weren't good reading either.

If the Embraer costs were so high, how come the board agreed to it in the first place ?
Domineering CEO ? Corporate vanity ? Ignorance ? All three ?
In 2017, the CFO of Norwegian quit, at least showing he was competent... and deserving of being hired by another firm... he's now the Group CFO at Qatar Air

Just hypothesising....If you remember that the company was the UK (profits taxable) part of the Walker Trust which is an off shore entity, and that many of the aircraft were leased via off short paper Walker trust companies, you'd probably not be at all surprised why the lease costs were what they were.... When the trust sold the company off, it didn't stop leasing the aircraft. It might have allowed the company to swim on it's own, but the millstone round the neck took a couple of years to begin to lessen, two Q400 per month. Again, just my guess.

The 175s were leased from Binder Bank in Brazil. By Flybe plc, in which Rosedale holdings (Walker family) were shareholders

They were not leased, they were 85% financed by BNDES (Brazilian Export Development Bank). Once fully paid the aircraft become Flybe's. The 'owned' Q400s have default and returned to those providing the financing, a bank in Germany.
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Yet these E175 still seem to be owned by Flybe Leasing 1, so unless BNDES has taken ownership of the company Flybe Leasing 1 then these E175s are in theory still Flybe's?

Thanks for the correction. The point i'm trying to make is that the Walker family were not respinsible for yhe high kease cost on the jets

Several of the 195s were leased from Falko, which has no connection to Flybe shareholders throughout any era. One of the (many) problems was that the 195s were on reverse-stepped rentals so that in the early days, cheaper rentals worked quite well. The theory was that as passenger growth matured and the market continued to grow, the airline could then afford higher monthly lease rates later in the deal ($210-230k/month if I remember rightly). Clearly as we all know, that didn't happen and so the ability to pay the rentals was decreasing at a time when the rentals to which they had committed were increasing, and a yawning gap developed between costs and revenue.

Yikes that was bound to hurt the bottom line.

..and to add to the pain noted by Flightrider, following the ordered disposal of LGW by BAA and as the airport became more and more capacity constrained (where Flybe were the 4th largest slot holder), costs increased as operators of smaller aircraft were penalised.

A perfect storm which relied to heavily on kicking the ball into the long grass with the hopes that things would be better further down the line.

How do you know that? We know they've pretty all much left the country.

can see this on G INFO

20 "Owned" Q400s Registered now under NORD/LB
6 E175s Registered now under FLYBE LEASING CAYMAN 1 LTD

Partly because they fell into the usual trap of thinking a move to a larger aircraft was a logical step but mainly because of this ridiculous mantra that jet aircraft are superior and will result in more people flying with them.

Ultimately the majority of people want to fly for as cheap as possible regardless of any little niggles like noise from the plane. FR would have gone out of business long ago if it wasn’t for the fact that the price is paramount for travellers. I have said it a number of times on here that the q400 was BEs USP, and their whole business was built around it. Clearly BE had their pants taken down with the 195 deal, which was made even worse by the fact a market never materialised for them. They were just flown around in a desperate attempt to slightly reduce the lease costs. The 175 was never needed, and was purely bought to pander to the ridiculous notion that jets are superior. Which is why they were mainly flown out of BHX and MAN on routes where AF and LH competed. It was another ball and chain around BEs ankle that they didn’t need. If they stuck to just having the Q400 BE would probably still be around today, even with the numerous morons that have been in charge over the years. Perhaps they could have even picked up a few A220s by now to serve A few holiday routes like Wideroe and Binter have done with the E-2. Air Baltic are proving the a220 is a good aircraft for low cost travel but BE are predominately a regional carrier so only a couple like wideroe/binter have exploded themselves to would work. I remember quite clearly at the time the 175s were introduced that they had numerous options in place with the idea that they would replace all the q400s. Utter madness.

Actually the 195s had the same capacity as the 146-300 they mainly replaced 118 vs 114. The 146s had been around since 1994

175's
 

Just to clarify a couple of points.

The 175 was never flown in competition with Air France on the BHX-CDG as it was a joint venture and rumour had it Air France insisted on Jets and in general the 195 operated first out and last back but the 175 more recently of course as the 195's reduced. The Q400 was only ever scheduled at the weekend.

The 175/195 was very much needed on the Milan and Florence as both had regular high load factors although yields were probably only sufficient in summer. Agreed re Amsterdam that the Q400 was sufficient for that route and the same could be said of Dusseldorf up against Eurowings.and the domestic routes.

Stuttgart was believed to be high yielding was not really a Q400 route and the 175 was perfect in terms of speed, reliability and passenger comfort. The same could be said of Berlin although not quite so high-yielding. Also of course they got into the IT market with Kefallinia and Preveza which needed jets and the 175 did both in recent years but whether this operation ever made a profit I do have my doubts.

As you say some routes they were used on was at times mind-boggling - MAN-NQY, MAN-SOU, MAN-LUX(only occasionally), BHX-EDI, BHX-GLA, BHX-NOC (Occasionally), MAN & BHX to DUS and AMS could have been served 100% of the time by the Q400 but having travelled on several 175's and Q400's the passenger experience was light years apart but of course that does not bring home the bacon especially if the jet were tied up in a bad finance deal.

Pete

You are, of course, correct about the relative capacities of the 146-300 and the E195. The difference is really that you could afford to park the former during periods of slack demand given the low capital but relatively high operating costs of the 146. You had to fly the nuts off the 195s to make a high capital cost but low operating cost aircraft work, and if the market demand isn't there to sustain the flying, the economics turn against you pretty quickly.

I suspect if we were to list out all the reasons why Flybe failed, these would be on the list but by no means alone. I am not volunteering to start the list though, nor do I think it is helpful to anyone at this point in time. The Embraer deals were undoubtedly part of the problem and not the solution, but they count amongst many reasons for Flybe's failure.

I wonder how cheap the capital cost if the 146 fleet would have been, at the time? They were a 'current' aircraft and in reasonable demand. As I remember BE were the launch customer for the updated RJX too, which was cancelled after 9/11. I don't think the E-195 is considered an aircraft with a low operating cost? Apparently, like-for-like the per-seat operational costs of a 195 are higher than an A319 and nearly the same as an A320. In an age where even Lufthansa fit 180 seats on their A320s, the cost delta cannot be justified. Especially in price-sensitive markets, which Wizz and FR are cost-leaders in. The irony is that if flyBe had been a retail organisation they could have used tools like CVA or pre-pack administration to stabilise around the Q400s and UK domestic travel. Because the CAA required companies going through such restructurings to surrender their operational licences they could not realign their cost-base to their revenue reality.

The loss of flyBe is a real shame for the UK, although a lot of routes will be replaced, with time. The cost for employees is high.

Bae were anxious to offload quite a few 146s in the nineties
They used to court Jack Walker asidously to take more. He told me

G-FLBD now owned by HEH Aviation flown BHX to NRN 28/07/2020.

ERJ175 G-FBJF flown EXT to LIS 22/08/2020. owned by Flybe Leasing Cayman.