From today's Advocate

NEW Burnie-Melbourne carrier Free Spirit Airlines says it plans to resume flights in September.

Free Spirit has been grounded since early June, claiming its crew had been "poached" by another airline.

It had hoped to resume flights in July.

"We are now in the final stages of bringing on line the right replacement crews to restore operational capacity," managing director Roman Badov said yesterday.

"We expect to emerge from our current situation a stronger and more robust airline."

The claims about poaching incensed established Melbourne-Burnie carrier Regional Express (Rex).

Free Spirit did not directly name Rex, but Rex accused it of making "scurrilous comments which tarnish our reputation" and claimed Free Spirit had averaged just 2.25 passengers per flight in May, and cancelled half its flights.

Free Spirit disputed the figures.

Yesterday, Mr Badov said: "The passenger loads we had been experiencing during our first month of operations exceeded our expectations and showed the merits of our business model.

"People are interested in a more competitive and affordable travel solution along currently monopolised regional routes.

"Unfortunately, flight crew leaving without giving any of the required notice have left us with no choice but to suspend our services until we can resolve the crew shortage."

The advocate is proving itself to be quite a joke by rehashing the same old article every time FS delay their reopening.

It is almost like FS are paying for these articles.
Assuming genuine journalistic balance was used, what have FS done to deserve such continued one sided reporting?
It almost seems as if they could have a crash and the advocate would still talk up their prospects.

Good. It's nice to see the press encouraging aviation for a change.

In spite of some obvious challenges facing this operation, it's very difficult to understand the cynicism evident in so many of these posts. Rightly or wrongly, somebody is having a go and that should be supported not derided.

I think the goodwill was used up years ago when Free Spirit was offering a cadetship with no real prospects of a job, for the sum of around $150,000.

The Advocate is the Work Experience Daily in its real guise.

A Burnie centric waste of space that carries at least 2 corrections a week for incorrect recording of names/dates/events.

If all the locusts in the world picked Burnie for their annual conference it would be reported as a triumph for the money that would be spent by inbound bug exterminators.

I agree air services breaking new ground are a great thing but lament the pre thought of this one and the execution. It will be less than impossible to get Burnie/Wynyard much less those from up and down the Coast onside now after the "fall over" and attracting the Melbourne based traffic is daunting looking at the cost to target potential markets compared to return.

I cannot see this ending well. Swan Hill Tyabb would be equally viable.

Best all

EWL

Given the high levels of negative sentiment towards these guys, can anyone say anything positive ?

Anyone work for them that can send a PM ?

Anyone care to explain how you 'poach' pilots. Either you work for someone or you don't.

Sounds like another CEO/Owner who's all about free market capitalism until it works against them....:ugh:

I think you will find that, all the staff resigning together is a little closer to the truth. I guess there must have been a reason for them all to walk

What tauro said...

Absolutely.

I see the "re-start" date has been pushed back again. How can they have any public confidence when they keep doing this. What are West Wing thinking :rolleyes:

If West Wing got it right, they stitched up a good standing charge for the airframe. If they were desperate to offload it, maybe they didn't.
The popular (and sometimes profitable) way to run old aircraft is to get high standing charges, set nothing aside for overhaul or repair and hope to hell that the lessee does not put any wear and tear on them by actually flying them.
Of course this assumes that the lessor gets paid.
Noted that FS are advertising again, so what happened to the training mentioned above?

Good theory Mach E Avelli, only one problem, West Wing don't have anything to do with airframe charges only AOC usage fees

They advertised again today for crew, must be a record for the number of times any company has advertised in such a short period.

No it just shows that common sense does sometimes prevail :ok:

I find it funny that they cry foul about other operators poaching their pilots, yet they have no hesitation contacting 1900 endorsed crew who are currently employed and who have not submitted their CV to FSA trying to entice them across (hence they are trying to poach pilots themselves!).

Hypocrisy, thy name is you!

I'd be very surprised if the company actually gets up and going now as they are really clutching at straws. Really, to infer that REX poached their crew. How silly would you have to be to think this the case. Wouldn't this be a wake up call to the relevant party's to pack up and go home. I don't think that this business has the qualified brains behind it to succeed. FSA is not known as a brand but another failure in the Australian business scene.

Mark the 4th of October in your diary as the new amended start date!

Mmmmmmm the 9th September was to be the re-start date plus infinite ather dates as well.

Yep Stationair

And if we work all day in the Blue Sky mine...............

Credibility is shot to hell. the duck has burst.

No doubt egged on by Tasmanian regional tourism alleged gurus.

We even had another pack of wankers pushing DPO SYD non stop Dash or ATR services.

Like QF Link or VA would dilute their LST services to SYD or the DPO MEL oncarriage market.

Of course the local excuse for a newspaper is all over it.

The City based tourism people here are well meaning idiots. Most are volunteers and the rest are "committee people". Hold them up to the light. not a brain in sight.

Best all

EWL

I am running out of space on this years calendar with all the postponed start dates.:p