Wow airlines
 

From Blue Swan:

WOW air to suspend five US routes
WOW air made the following changes to Reykjavik–US service, according to a 16-Oct-2018 GDS inventory and timetable display:

Cincinnati: Four times weekly service to be discontinued from 26-Oct-2018;
Cleveland: Three times weekly service to be discontinued from 25-Oct-2018;
Dallas/Fort Worth: Three times weekly service to be discontinued from 26-Oct-2018;
New York JFK: Daily service to be discontinued from 26-Oct-2018;
St Louis: Three times weekly service to be discontinued from 06-Jan-2019.
For all routes, WOW air does not plan to resume seasonal service in 2019.

ICE have put a swift end to the increasing duplication of their routes by WOW. Only a matter of time until the purple planes are no more !

Perhaps a moderator could join these posts with the existing WOW Airlines thread?

So WOW Air shareholders will get 5.4 % of the value of Icelandair in return for selling their shares. Not zero but says to me that WOW Air was deemed a near worthless company. I'm guessing WOW Air management knew their company was near bankruptcy and a deal was done to avoid the heavily-tourism-dependent Icelandic economy having a major shock from loss of confidence and decline in visitor numbers

Sold for €18m. That certainly indicates a troubled airline.

Aviation history shows that Icelandic airlines tend to have an almost uncanny knack of reinventing themselves. Shame for the investors that lose their shirts but hey ho it would appear to be a national past time up there.

KEF is ideally placed as a hub and I would expect it to continue as such (although the infrastructure is getting tight). Whether it makes sense to operate two brands along side each other is questionable. You want to maximise the number of available connections which points to there being a single operator, although there is no reason why there can't be a WOW style low cost section in each aircraft. Then again Qantas & Jetstar operate as separate brands and I believe codeshare. Makes life confusing for the punter though.

WOW operate Airbus, whilst Icelandair Boeing. Huge costs as a result of duplication.

As we spak, 4 aircraft are being flown to SNN and LDE for storage, 2x a330 and 2x a320. News sources reporting that the deal with Icelandair could be in doubt : https://grapevine.is/news/2018/11/26...y-in-jeopardy/
Also an email from Wow air to shareholders can be viewed here : https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/w...ondholders.pdf

That's it then, just a matter of time unfortunately.

I hate to see any airline struggling because there are careers, livelihoods and travel plans involved but its going to be challenging for WOW air over the next few months...

• A fifth of the fleet returned to lessors - maybe not a bad thing given the cutbacks it is making
• Several US and European routes dropped or frequencies reduced - Europe-US is the airline's primary business proposition
• Doubt an uncertainty spread by the failed acquisition and statements by the airline about its financial position
• Winter slow period on the north Atlantic coming up

Yep, it doesn't give the public confidence booking with them and it all spirals out of control from there. Knowing what I do about their situation I certainly wouldn't go and book a ticket with them now.

Wow airs handler at KEF Airport Associates has laid off 237 staff this evening.

https://markets.businessinsider.com/...ent-1027768928

Lifeline thrown....

WOW Air lays off 111 staff, cuts fleet from 20 to 11 aircraft, and cuts LAX and DEL routes from January: https://www.icelandreview.com/news/w...off-111-today/

Update by WOW on their future.

WOW air is restructuring and going back to its roots
Reykjavik, Iceland – December 13, 2018

After a challenging year, WOW air is now restructuring and simplifying its operations to return to its roots as a profitable ultra-low cost airline while discussions with Indigo Partners progress.

WOW air's fleet will be reduced from twenty to eleven aircraft, all single-aisle Airbus. WOW air is in negotiations with its lessors to return some of its aircraft including all Airbus A330s. Four Airbus A321s are being sold in a transaction that will improve WOW air's liquidity by more than 10 million USD.

There will no changes in the schedule in December and early January. In January 2019, WOW air will implement a new flight schedule. WOW air will contact passengers affected by these changes.

Considering this smaller operation, a reduction in WOW air’s workforce is unfortunately inevitable. Today, 111 permanent employees were laid off across the airline. Contractors and short term staff will not be renewed for the time being. WOW air hopes to be able to offer affected employees a future employment opportunity when WOW air starts growing again.

“This is the most difficult day in the history of WOW air. We have dedicated people who have worked hard to make WOW air a reality and it breaks my heart to downsize the company. However, in order to ensure our future and preserve WOW air in the long run, we unfortunately must take these drastic measures“ says Skuli Mogensen CEO and founder of WOW air.

After this restructuring, about one thousand employees will remain with WOW air.

This information is information that WOW air hf. is obliged to make public pursuant to the EU Market Abuse Regulation. The information was submitted for publication, through the agency of the contact person set out above, at 11:00 GMT on December 13, 2018.

Sold it's Gatwick slots and moving full London operation to STN, will that survive with such competition up the road at LTN ?

...Wizz Air.

It was not disclosed and they don't move fully across until April, if they survive that long as obviously a cash generation exercise.

Wow had 2 flights a day to Lgw and daily to Stn during the summer. The schedule for next summer is one daily, a bit of a reduction. Basically, the Stn operation continues as was, the 2 Lgw flights have been cancelled,so not much of a gain for Stn I think, in spite of the press releases.

"Not much of a gain for STN"...

Well at present planning WOW actually return to STN & almost certainly with the downsizing both London airports were not.

The STN ops will now be year round instead of seasonal.

The STN ops will be retimed giving better connections to US/Canada.

STN ops now commence 31st March 2019 as opposed to 25th April this year.

So a little kudos for STN certainly.

If it lasts until then Bobby. All depends on Indigo Partners.

Have Indigo and Wow actually signed a legally binding contract (not some fluffy preliminary in-principle piece with a thousand caveats allowing Indigo to walk away without paying a penny) that would require Indigo invest at least $50m or more into Wow and be enforceable in a court ? Or have Indigo already handed the money over already ?

I know due diligence was taking place earlier this month but nothing seems to have happened with Indigo since then...

Almost certainly not. Nothing would be signed without due diligence, and that would take a number of weeks. I'm pretty sure it's "fluff".

Indigo Partners...

The (perhaps) subtlety appears unperceived or uncommented then...

With a common factor at present being Indigo Partners as lead investor in Wizz & engaged in negotiations/talks with WOW, recently Wizz obtain the 4 daily take off/landing slots currently used by WOW at Gatwick & wef 31/3/19 launch two new daily routes from there.

Coincidence or initial synergy in play?

Indigo Partners with a very large portfolio of single aisle Airbus a/c for future delivery would it could be imagined find another partner airline a very useful addition for the placing of some of those frames.

Not completely correct.

Airport Coordination shows that one of the daily sets slots recently acquired by Wizz at Gatwick came from Flybe. The other came from Wow. Wow's second set has gone to easyJet.

Puts Wow Air in an very weak position. Sounds like Icelandair can pretty much name their terms - and those terms will be inferior to those on offer a few months ago

"Aiming to conclude by Monday 25th March"

WOW

Sounds like there'll be a take it or leave it situation

Fuel bill due maybe??

I was thinking that! Any Airbus airline will have a value to a Boeing one at present.