......and this particular airframe indeed never operated by the old Flybe.

One of the Directors of Thyme Opco is also a Director of Cyrus Capital, owners of the defunct Flybe so I would conjecture that a rebirth is a step closer. The other Director has been an adviser and spokesman for Cyrus on Flybe matters.

Dash 8 G-CLXC is ex OE-LGA of Austrian Airlines.

southside bobby

Avoids any possible unpleasantness with creditors if it gets into operation?.

Might be best to start a new thread for the "rebirth"? It's unlikely to be called flybe after all and this feels a tad like dancing on the grave of an old friend.

If someone else wants to fly a 20 year old Q400 on flybe's old routes then fair play but perhaps let's leave the old Jersey European company to rest in peace. No one looks at an Eastern B767 today and says "Oh I remember when they flew TriStars out of Miami

Skipness One Foxtrot

Then why buy the Flybe brand and website?

So who owns all the flight & revenue data?...perhaps the main reason for the asset purchase.

DC3 Dave

Because they're clowns with money to burn? The brand was beyond redemption years ago, in the public's mind, flybe is a now bankrupt airline that flew old propellor planes and was frequently unreliable. They spent money on buying THAT? This whole idea is a crackpot delusion that would be a very bad idea even in a good year.

Aviation is legendary for parting otherwise sensible investors from their money, it screws with good judgement as the part of your brain that deals with religion, faith, loyalty, belief, purpose and even rising from the dead gets involved.

They don't deserve a second chance, certainly not one where their original creditors remain overwhelmingly unpaid. By all means start something new, but I have a problem with resurrecting failed airlines from the dead.

Or maybe they are very smart. Buying an airline in a box with a portfolio of slots, licenses in place, no debts, a customer data base, minimal cash burn their choice of launch timing and very cheap aircraft leasing options. We will just have to see.

So to quote jethros web site info, Type 'A' AOC licence applied for 01 Dec 20
Yesterday we read that they have now registered 1 Dash8

How long does it take for them to get the Type A AOC Licence.

I suspect they're not in any rush at present. What they do have though is a nearby Flight Training organisation and hundreds of unemployed ex Flybe crew all revalidated and checked out in Q400 simulators throughout this Winter. That's one of the major hurdles and costs associated with a startup jumped cleanly already!

Would a new flybe inherit existing marketing opt-ins to the old flybe's customer database under GDPR?

If it's the same legal entity I guess TUPE would apply to the rehiring of flight crew and any other previous employees?

I'm intrigued to see what their intentions are. Where they think there is money to be made from the old airline. I would have thought any of the routes which made money would now have new operators?

Purchasing the same legal entity is usually a big NO since it tends to include all the old unpaid debts. One tends to buy certain assets (eg the software to run the website or specific airport slots) of the old failed company instead, but leave the old legal entity well alone

So any data on customers they may have is for analysis only and pre COVID and dated? They cannot direct market to anyone via email or DM?

biddedout

Perhaps also add years of losses to write future profits off against?

Not if the new owners set up a new legal entity as has been mentioned. Thyme OpCo haven’t agreed to buy the business of Flybe Ltd, they’ve bought certain Flybe assets from the administrators of Flybe Ltd.

Let's not forget that Cyrus and Virgin are two of Flybes biggest secured creditors. Its likely they will see some of their expense back through the administration process or even write some off rather than pay.

Chatting away to a few people in recent days, a couple in fairly high-up places, and they had some very interesting views of Flybe 2.

It is exactly as JSCL suggests in terms of Cyrus trying to get some of their losses back through the administration process, getting their mitts on those slots which are worth something. There's apparently still a legal battle going on about the Heathrow slots etc etc and Cyrus took security over the slots in return for some of the loans it advanced to Flybe 1.

It sounds like this could be an elaborate deception. To get the slots from Flybe 1, Flybe 2 has to have its licences in place. It doesn't want to buy Flybe 1 for all of the reasons above, but has to have an aircraft to do a proving flight, be awarded its AOC and then receive its Operating Licence. The ageing Austrian Q400 is the cheapest way of doing that and it sounds like hardly any of the other leasing companies will deal with them as none believe the plan is credible (and they might be right!). Get the licences, transfer the slots, sell them and pack up after never carrying a passenger. Solves the problem of branding for sure.

They must have had to put a business plan forward to the CAA and I wouldn't suspect that plan says this. But this is increasingly the suspicion across the industry judging by what I'm hearing.

Cyrus is never going to hold on to flybe long term. When time is right sell, they will flybe on to make back money from investment

This is very interesting. I did think it was fishy when I found that Q400 they had registered is older than any of the Flybe ones were.

I hope if we do see Flybe 2.0 they have learnt from some of their rivalry behaviours - taking the Ryanair approach dumping capacity onto competitors routes and dropping it after having forced said competitor off the route. The loganair/eastern highland debacle is probably the most prominent example of this, and they quite clearly never had the financial strength that Ryanair or similar do.

RVF750

If I read this right, they have incurred a lot of costs in revalidating a lot of crews. However how would this square with Albert Hall’s suggestion that the resurrection is merely a smokescreen to make some money for selling Heathrow slots? Training up half a dozen crews at most for a single Dash maybe, for appearances sake, but hundreds?

Its certainly a plan, but surely the value of slots at Heathrow has dropped over the last few months?

No matter what the rationale behind this is, they will have a massive PR job to get Joe Public back on board and probably airports and service providers as well. Flybe left a bitter taste in a lot of people's mouth so it will be interesting to see what operational model they follow and as stated previously, will they have learnt anything from there past.

Why do they need a massive PR exercise to get Joe Public on board? Does Ryanair have this backing? IMO it’s all about offering flights to destinations enough people want to go to at a reasonable price.

As for those who have lost out from Flybe’s demise, they know full well they are dealing with a totally different business and will be happy to deal with them subject to the usual checks and risk assessment.

DC3 Dave, as I see it, the last year or two of Flybe saw a huge decline in the airline's standing with its regular flyers. Reliability was never brilliant but was then compounded by the pilot leave fiasco leading to mass flight cancellations. On the flights that did operate, Flybe set about trying to utterly p**s off passengers by zealous enforcement of a hand baggage policy that left many avoiding the airline on that basis alone. When they did fly, the Q400s were increasingly poor inside and that did not fill you with confidence about everything else.

Yes, Ryanair have similar baggage policies but at least they have been very consistent - you know what you're signing up to. With Flybe you just did not know if you'd be cancelled, delayed, or randomly raped and pillaged at the gate if your hand baggage was deemed fractionally too big according to baggage sizers and ground staff which seemed to vary by airport. Even if you made it through that obstacle course then you boarded a Q400, invariably got seat-moved as the aircraft was "trim sensitive" - whatever that means to the average punter - and subjected to a filthy, dog-eared and tatty cabin.

Through no fault of those on the front line, it turned into a shambles of an airline which you couldn't depend on to turn up on time or avoid a sense of trepidation every time you set out to fly with them. It needed a change of brand to shed itself of this image. It says it all that a certain CEO offhandedly waved away the cabin crew when she was politely asked on a Q400 one day to remove her iPhone headphones for the safety demonstration.

And someone somewhere thinks it's a good idea to put all this back in the sky under the same damaged brand as before. It would probably be an easier sell to put a branch of Ratners back on every high street.

I'm sure others have equally strong and possibly opposing views. But for me the "essential regional connectivity" that Flybe offered is now provided by others where it's truly needed, and the rest of this sorry mess is best left to an airline history book still to be written.

A little bit here about the rumoured legal bid over the LHR slots

https://londonairtravel.com/2020/09/...gal-challenge/

I’m a bit confused by some of these theories because surely the LHR slots Flybe used were remedy slots and these can’t be sold.

I thought so too but apparently these Cyrus people have a legal case that the slots can be possessed and sold. I'm sure that they would say that though! Probably worth chucking a few hundred grand at legal fees to give it a try, if you put yourself in their position. It was described to me as pretty desperate but when the possible jackpot outweighs the losses to such an extent then you'd stay at the gambling table for a bit longer to see if your luck improves, I suppose.

G-CLMT looks like Dash No2..... expect more.

Flybe 2 hasn’t paid for anybody revaluation, the individuals did or with help from the job centre. Flybe 1 may have paid for the retained staff. More staff are being added to get this up and running.

​​​​Sorry what? You say the Job Centre is doing what now?

Job centres have a pot of cash they can use to help people back into work by doing courses etc. They have funded some people’s Dash revaluations.

Who says that is the case?

Take a look at an existing UK operator Eastern Airways. Its not obvious from their branding that the AOC is actually in the name of my old air-taxi job Air Kilroe Ltd. Thus even if former FlyBe assests are used in some way there will be a new name to splash with publicity.

In fact how about a guessing game to take up a few minutes of lockdown? Any ideas..........

2B or not 2B

Jamie2009

I'm not sure that there's any evidence to suggest this. OE-LGC was re-registered to G-CLMT in May of last year when ownership moved from Austrian to EIC Aircraft Leasing.
Looks like the aircraft has been in storage since.

Clarification:
G-CLMT is ex OE-LGC. Different frame from G-CLXC which is ex OE-LGA.

G-CLMT Inside Exter Hanger

photo courtesy of shamu28, Flickr

What fleet size do we think for any reincarnation?

i guess 5 - 8 aircraft to begin with .......

How much money are we talking? And by revaluations I guess you mean sim hours to remain current?

OKAY this where I can see something possible, a new airline on some of the old flybe network relaunched from the ashes. But to be super clear :
1) Don't call it flybe - the branding is tainted with actual bankruptcy (bad) and unreliability (much worse) . Yes it is, let's not deny it. Call it something else.
2) One of the problems with the now bankrupt flybe was operating old Q400s in a market that was better suited capacity wise to an ATR or a jet for speed. Flying even older Q400s doesn't address this. They're looking to make the same mistake again. Actually in that case they should call it flybe

allan1987

That's not G-CLXC.... it's OE-LGC (G-CLMT) being broken for spares (photo courtesy of shamu28, Flickr...)