If they'd started properly and not sold seats & services they couldn't provide they might have lasted a while longer. But, TBH , regional airlines have always been a very marginal business in the UK

Truth of the matter is the demand wasn't there. They've rarely been above 50% full on the CAA stats and from their ticket pricing structure you need way more than 38 people per flight to be even remotely close to breaking even.

Obviously, that was all compounded by the wrong choice of aircraft and reliability issues etc.

Cyrus are £30m out of pocket as a result. But that's all on them. Why they thought they could take an airline and failed brand, which hadn't made any money for about 15 years, and then turn a profit focusing on Heathrow, against national carriers etc is madness and naive at best about the industry.

They would have been better focusing entirely on one hub to start with, Belfast or Bhx, somewhere where they may have been able to establish a niche and competitiveness against low cost rivals.

Rule 1 of airlines. How do you make a small fortune? Start with a large one and run an airline. Unless Cyrus know something we don't, they have just been educated.

I'm still scratching my head at this one as much as when there was talk of the possibility of creating a future FlyBe 2. At the same time as being sad for the staff, perhaps it's also good that capitalism has a defect in that people with capital but no idea how to run an airline were able to provide employment attempting to have one set up.

This isn't an I told you so thread, but I can't remember seing anyone that didn't tell us so. I will never be able to work out any aspect of what made them think this was a good idea, and why if they did want to set up an airline they'd use an existing failed brand or such a weird collection of routes. I'm sure there's a triva master here that can give more than one previous example of a people stranded at airports style airline failure where someone has later come along and reused the brand, but I can't think of one!

No one likes a smart arse who shows he can be wise after the event. But the trouble with FlyBe-2 is that we were ALL wise before the event; indeed wise as soon as we saw FlyBe-1's COW park her very small tank onto LOG's front lawn. It was always going to end in tears, and yes we ALL on here could see that. There is, however, still a latent arrogance that exudes from wealthy people, who always seem to want to own an airline and prove the 'wise-after-the-event-neersayers' wrong; mated with airline employees who have been dumped on from a great height with no notice, yes there will be people hoping the phoenix will rise, and it's way better than working for Tesco's. Surely we can ALL understand that.

Aviation brings out the best in people, and the worst in untrained investors and dubious airline management candidates. JF, SH, and COW all lost the plot, and one of them never had the plot in the 1st place.

Do they actually own the slots? The last slots were grandfathered to the old Flybe, which were lost and not transferred to the new operation despite an appeal.

Weren't they just leasing them?

It's been clear amongst all the smoke and mirrors that the slots were the only thing of value in this whole mess. Doubt whether Cyrus were ever that interested in running an airline, just extracting value.

It’s been pretty apparent that Flybe V2 had a fairly draconian social media policy for its staff and there has been next to no comment.

From all that I heard, just as JF’s enormous aircraft order (pure hubris), SH’s ego and COW’s incompetence led to the eventual demise of Flybe V1, the leader at Flybe V2 has been something short of stellar too. A bizarre insistence on being called “Mister Pflieger”, inability to listen or take decisions are amongst the last year’s stories. No point in posting at the time as clear those inside couldn’t discuss it - but now those constraints are no longer, would anyone be able to lend any insight as to whether this was all true?

And surely also nonsensical given the slots are said to be held by the administrator?

The owners are listed as creditors. The administrators sell it for enough and they get their money.

The Loganair chief’s LinkedIn is quite interesting. He was leading Zoom (the airline) when they went bust. He made a point of saying how the last thing he did was make sure every employee at least got the pay they were due. They were not able to do the usual transfer so a team sat there making all the payments individually.

Edit: I’d heard Flybe didn’t pay staff but this was untrue so have removed that statement. Apologies

Another interesting post:
”Statistics provided by the UK CAA reveal how the airline’s monthly load factor has only once exceeded 60%, and that was in its first month, when the airline’s re-launch received plenty of (free) publicity. Since then, the airline has struggled to get above 55%. In 2019, the year before the original airline failed, it was achieving load factors well above 70%.”
https://airserviceone.com/flybe-susp...ajor-carriers/

I thought I read somewhere that Flybe 2 staff were paid just before the administration. Am I wrong?

I hope so and would happily correct my post and apologise if I am wrong.

"The administrator, Interpath Advisory, said Flybe had struggled to withstand a number of shocks since its relaunch last year, but highlighted the late delivery of 17 aircraft from lessors, which severely compromised its efforts to build back capacity and remain competitive."

Who on Earth writes this garbage without first doing some homework and investigation? A quick scan of 'Planespotters' will show that at least 6 aircraft have been moved on to other operators and another tranche (of the original 54 no-less) are being turned into Water Bombers!

"Flybe staff said they were informed the delays were down to the aircraft requiring “significant repair work” after they had been recovered from the original Flybe collapse in 2020. Delays were made worse by replacement parts’ supply chain problems lengthening the time it took finish repairs, they were told."

Yep, blame lessors and maintenance for the poor business model that was losing £5m a month!

It seems the problem was more so the Q400's they already had. On their final day only five actually flew. Were the rest tech like usual? Those cancellations must have cost them a fortune in compensation and payments.

Depends if they'd made those payment before they pulled the plug...

Comment shall not be passed on the competency or lack thereof of the lessors but the fleet number is exactly correct, 17 aircraft 9 of which were registered to FLYBE LTD at time of administration.

Lots of talk about slots on here - but is LHR again slot-constrained after the pandemic? The reason why slots at LHR have traditionally been seen as a goldmine was that there were no slots available from the slot pool (other than useless "moonlight slots"). Is that the case again? Plus another issue is that serious money is usually paid for slots suitable for long-haul ops. This is not necessarily the case when slots used by a short-haul operator become available as those slots may not allow for sufficient ground-time or are at unsuitable ime of the day. So those slots may have some value but not necessarily as much as many would hope.

Yes LHR is constrained with the use it or lose it rule back. Wideroe for example lose their slots and move to STN.
While they might not be ideal slots, a large batch which can be mixed and swapped with others to create a good combination will have some value.