Reliability.... Good point, they have to start small as the only Dash sim is now in Austria which will cause logistical problems for crew training.... or Ethiopia here we come😬🤞.
Bet the lease company give them extra aircraft they won’t initially need for next to nowt, so if one breaks they can jump on a spare.

Atlantic Explorer

A new airline with no debts could operate on wafer thin margins to decimate the opposition and play a long game. An airline with debts to service could not.....

Or maybe they could just do a Flybe, go bust, and start up again minus the debt.

I decided to take a few days out from the thread after the aggressive reaction to my previous post. Since then several others have said much of what I would have replied anyway and the discussion is live.

There is a strong view, publicly stated by some quite prominent people, that the Flybe re-start is driven only by slots and the value of Flybe's holding. I don't need to say sorry for sharing that view or noting that it has been expressed elsewhere.

There is no longer a bunch of domestic routes served by Flybe at the time of its collapse needing to be flown. As every week passes, more of the Flybe routes are being taken up by others - easyJet has taken up the second airline position on BHX-AMS and has taken over BHX-EDI/GLA, Ryanair has announced new services to Knock on ex-Flybe routes, Loganair, Blue Islands, Stobart Air and Eastern have all taken up large or medium chunks of the former Flybe network. BACF has gone on LCY-BHD and so on. And on. And on.

Unless those behind the re-incarnation of Flybe are totally ignoring all of this, there are hardly any gaps left for the reincarnated airline to fill. The other airlines have the market pretty well covered, or at least those bits of the market where there is money to be made.

A decent venture capitalist (and by all accounts the guy from Cyrus is sharp in every meaning of the word) can't fail to have spotted this. It lends to speculation there must be some other motive - and it's a short step from there to the question of value in the Flybe slots.

The new start-up has lost some key people who decided they wouldn't take the 40% pay cut imposed recently. I have spoken to one and they were pleased to get out. Times are tough all round but you can't launch an airline without postholders.

I assume we will get no closer to understanding the real plan until Flybe 2 is licenced and this all plays out. The recent management departure had the same suspicions. So as clarity won't come from Flybe / Cyrus the big question for me is on what grounds Loganair are obviously raising objections and whether these could and should be published. It could be one of a few things - the market doesn't need a new airline, foreign ownership rules with a US investor, slot blocking and possibly something else instead. In other words, do they really have a case to object, instead of objecting for objection's sake?

That's my view. If you don't like it, having a go is all very well but doesn't make me wrong and you right - or vice versa!

Excellent debate of the various perspectives.

My guess here is that there probably more to this than seems obvious. If they can start an airline and secure the LHR slots that's a good foundation in terms of an asset and security. However, I've been around long enough to see how cut throat the industry is. Yes they may well have a sporting chance on the cost base side, but they'll need scale to generate cash to keep them in the game, and strong cash reserves to capture any sizeable network and win out over the competition who will fight their corner.

If I were a betting man I'd not fancy the odds.

In relation to Loganair, they have a sizeable fleet of regional jets that most likely will have significantly higher unit operating costs compared to a prop.

​​​​​​Southampton might have been a huge base, but I'd take it as a given the a low cost airline will secure a base their as soon as the runway enhancement is complete, feels like an easyJet space, though Wizz might move quick to secure it. In such an event Flybe2 might not get the same opportunity. BHD is wrapped up between EI and LM for comparable routes and in that market Emerald will be asking soon with a clean sheet cost base so not a quick win for Flybe2. Hard to see where the key market or operating model would be at.

Albert Hall

Who’s left the business out of interest? Which posts not people?

Whatever the motives they already look more credible as a business than some of the many brass plate (UK).com (registered in Jersey:hmm:) airlines currently springing up all over the place and being dutifully rubber stamped by the CAA.

... "many brass plate (UK).com (registered in Jersey) airlines currently springing up all over the place"....Please enlighten your audience.

Laker Airways was a brass plate Jersey company. Much revered and totally screwed by the cartel of North Atlantic operators
What do you think about them?🥶

Original poster comments are in the present tense..."currently springing up all over the place" so can the audience be enlightened please.

I read the EY report.

Seems as likely to me that Cyrus bought the business to try and sell it (and in particular its slots, hence the appeal to the CAA over the withdrawal of the OL) on as to actually (re)start an airline, if not moreso.

Tell me why I'm wrong.

Edit: downloaded the report and read it over the weekend. Hadn't looked at new posts since then. Reading them, I guess I'm not wrong.

Edit edit: aiui ownership of the slots depends on having an OL, having an OL depends upon various other bits, people etc being in place. So a pretence of possibly being a functioning airline needs to be retained. Everything points to Cyrus believing it can realise value from the slots.

I am talking about the subsidiaries of foreign airlines setting up UK businesses to get UK AOC's to get round the brexit fiasco. Effectively controlled from afar and propped up by the parent.

Well, Cyrus won"t get any buyers for the slots for 2 to 3 years at leasy due to the pandemic and by that time will have lody them again

I get that, but it's one thing the company wanting / needing people in place, but which "people" would be willing to join the business and potentially muddy their career credentials given that the motives of Cyrus so blinding obvious to people on this forum?? They have either spun them a bloody good yarn, or else there is the intention to actually operate an airline, however flawed many posters and pundits believe such a plan is.

Exactly AT.
Meanwhile welcome home ECOI.

"Springing up all over the place"...
The alluding was far greater than the facts I guess then.

Interestingly appears to have crossed the pond eastbound (via Iceland) yesterday, and is just arriving in TLS as I type having departed WIC earlier.

Guess this one isn't going for firebomber conversion. FB post I saw suggests its on its way to Oz?

...Receding into the distance perhaps...slated for next stage = TLS-Heraklion.

It’s off to Oz to fly for Cobham Aviation. Photos I saw of it earlier show it in Cobhams livery.

ATNotts

I imagine the 10-20 people we're talking about (at a guess) don't mind taking a paying job where they live, when there's absolutely nothing else available. At a guess