Brilliant from Loganair and yet another PR disaster for BE (will they ever learn)!

It isn't great for PR, but do you seriously think they want stuff like this to happen?

Perhaps you could enlighten us as to how you'd make it all better?

Perhaps we could start with a better understanding of why the anticipated aircraft could not be delivered on the planned date or put into commercial use ? It's difficult to suggest how a situation could be remedied without good knowledge of how it went wrong in the first place

There are some simple steps they could take. 1. Don't keep announcing new routes if you have continually had problems securing aircraft on time. Have a decent buffer of time between aircraft due to arrive and operate (of course this costs money but its better than continually destroying your brand) and if the plane doesn't come or seems highly unlikely with two weeks to go then postpone (at least cancelling more than 2 weeks in advance you won't have to pay compensation to all the passengers who did book) 2. Lease in support to cover for delayed aircraft (surely the leasing contract should have some kind of clause to cover such needs if it is as we are told and all the lessors fault - and if it is delayed aircraft why completely scrap the route rather than just postpone.

In small markets like this you're not going to get endless chances. Who would risk rebooking with Flybe next time they announce they are launching routes from IOM in competition with Loganair?

This is a perpetual problem that continues to play out, if you can’t guarantee the metal to transport the punters then don’t over commit on route announcements. The negative publicity is hugely damaging for the new start up and people will link this closely with the fall out from BE Version1, not a good look!

Is The Times preempting something ?

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/travel/ad...with-goes-bust

If people read it, that's not going to do FlyBe much good. Not many are going to distinguish between V2 and V1. Monarch (pictured in the article) has gone. The name of this reincarnation has been discussed at length in the past, but it might have been better if they had retained Thyme Opco.

Flybe customer services said today it was due to poor bookings, nothing about lack of aircraft.

You'd have thought somebody will have been on to the Times suggesting a change of picture.

Spares are still an issue for all airlines!

If Flybe was to go out of business, which it isn't (take into account its shareholding) it would be people's livelihoods at stake. Not really something to joke about.

I’m not suggesting it’s going anywhere but shareholders mean nothing. When owners get tired of throwing good money after bad it doesn’t matter who the owner is. Plenty of companies owned by those with very deep pockets have gone under in the past. Everyone has a limit to how much money they will put into something. If they reach that point and it doesn’t look like it’s getting better they often say enough.

As for the picture, that’s the problem with using the name of a bankrupt carrier.

So customer services says the complete opposite of the Flybe press release but what a lot of people suspected.

When you look at the delays from Birmingham today and the cost of eu261 claims for the dozens of flight cancelled over the coming weeks you wonder how they can afford this.
correct me if I am wrong but I was under the impression Birmingham is their hub however there doesn't seem to be much of a schedule from this airport

BHX
 

Not sure what your re on about ;)- they operated a whole sector yesterday from BHX:confused::ugh::oh:. Okay A few months ago they planned 10 and in the end managed just 1 inbound Belfast City but 4 sectors at least (EDI & GLA) were cancelled more than 2 weeks in advance.

Still another day to forget for Flybe at BHX and worse still, one cancellation was Amsterdam a route they are doing well on and the competitors have slashed frequencies so little chance of pax getting back into BHX at the end of half-term. The worrying aspect to me is that Flybe couldn't find a suitable airline to sub-in on that would have been full inbound and a decent outbound load as well, of course if that was considered. On the bright side all 6 sectors operated today, okay none anywhere near their schedule timings but an improvement on Sunday

Pete

Looking ahead to what is planned by March, they will need at least 10 airframes to cover all the early morning departures. Quite a tight program of mostly 8 sector days so presumably mainly 4 sector days for crews. Mostly out and backs so fairly simple but not a lot of spare down time so I wonder if they will have twisted the money man's arm enough by then for a crewed spare. If so, things might settle, and it could be quite efficient by then if they get it right. It certainly looks like there will be more possibilities from SOU but I guess the bigger picture will depend on what sort of alliances they are negotiating (if any). If there is to be a further spat with Logan, I imagine that will start around SOU. There are still quite a few single rotation routes which surely will have to be built upon to become viable.

Whether it's poor bookings or lack of a/c, the short notice of the cancellation shows there's something amiss somewhere. Who is doing the forward look?

One of the things I don’t understand about Flybe v 2 is why they need to schedule so tightly - I am referring to the comment above about lots of 8 sector days. Traditionally there are 2 basic approaches to scheduling. Either 1/ you have new, very reliable aircraft which you can work hard and which you need to because the fixed cost of the aircraft (lease or whatever) is high and the unit needs to fly a lot of hours to cover these costs or 2/ you use older aircraft which are much cheaper. You don’t therefore need to fly them as hard to cover the fixed cost and instead accept that more of you costs will be variable (hours related maintenance, fuel etc). You accept that these older aircraft will be less reliable than newer aircraft but that’s an acceptable trade off because you can afford a much looser schedule and back up aircraft (the greatest ever exponent of this approach was probably Dan Air with the comet).
So, it’s quite a while since I was actively involved in leasing aircraft but I imagine Dash 8 400s are not expensive (unless lessors perceive Flybe v 2 to be so high risk that they need a very long barge pole to touch them). As such, given that there are clearly a number of contributors to this thread who either work for or have a vested interest in Flybe v 2, could one of them explain exactly why they are pursuing the strange business model of trying to intensively operate cheap, unreliable aircraft rather than going for a more relaxed and thus more reliable schedule?

In terms of 1 above, there does seem to be an attempt to build in some buffer time, for example it was said that FLBB is due this week, but is not needed to operate the schedule straight away. So they might have needed to delay the IOM start by a few days (if this a/c was earmarked for that), but not bin it completely. Maybe some truth in that a commercial decision was taken (due lack of bookings), albeit very/too late in the day.

In terms of 2, again perhaps a commercial decision based on lack of bookings (where it would make no sense to go to the expense of a lease-in - depending on how much of that a lessor may or may not cover)

I'd like to see Flybe 2 succeed, but in some respects at least they're not helping themselves by making a better job of managing the headwinds they currently face.

And now they’ve announced Belfast - Newcastle and Newcastle - Heathrow from 7 Nov. So all this blame about leasing issues is not true as they evidently have aircraft available just a week later.