V-Flyer

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-54596915

Interesting ....

Seems utter madness to me. Flybe was a basket case that couldn’t make money in the good times. Now no-one’s travelling much it’s surely doomed from the outset, however well-intentioned.

Someone has clearly got more money than common sense here. As gumshoe has stated above, flybe could not turn a profit in the good times pre-pandemic - so they don't stand a cat in hell's chance now that people are not travelling the way they used to.

I'm slightly more positive about this. It appears that they have no intention of relaunching until the pandemic eases in 2021.

Additionally, from media reports, it appears that they have not taken on the pre-existing fleet. There are going to be some cheap leasing deals on aircraft available given the contraction in demand.

If Cyrus are in this for the long run then they will pick their routes carefully, presumably enter into a code-share agreement with Virgin given their close links. I give it 3 years before they snap up the couple of small airlines which picked up ex-Flybe routes and by 2025, I think we may see Virgin Connect actually happening.

Moley wrote:I'm slightly more positive about this. It appears that they have no intention of relaunching until the pandemic eases in 2021.

Additionally, from media reports, it appears that they have not taken on the pre-existing fleet. There are going to be some cheap leasing deals on aircraft available given the contraction in demand.

If Cyrus are in this for the long run then they will pick their routes carefully, presumably enter into a code-share agreement with Virgin given their close links. I give it 3 years before they snap up the couple of small airlines which picked up ex-Flybe routes and by 2025, I think we may see Virgin Connect actually happening.

I'm with you Moley - I was always under the impression one of the reasons FlyBe couldn't make money was the aircraft / leases entered into by the previous owners where wrong for their model. Virgin Connect struggled to get out these existing leases.

Air travel will come back albeit slowly and if you have the money and now the time to start with routes / aircraft you want, there's every chance that in the future (maybe 3 or 4 years from now) it could be a very successful purchase.

They obviously know something we don't otherwise why pay for a name when you could just start from new.

David

I think being free of the historical onerous contracts should help whatever the new FlyBe is to have a good chance of succeeding. It is a buyers market, so if they are sensible they should be able to add aircraft and staff at reasonable cost so they can be competitive if their business model stacks up.

Whether this has any relationship to Virgin Atlantic remains to be seen...

David wrote:I'm with you Moley - I was always under the impression one of the reasons FlyBe couldn't make money was the aircraft / leases entered into by the previous owners where wrong for their model. Virgin Connect struggled to get out these existing leases.

Air travel will come back albeit slowly and if you have the money and now the time to start with routes / aircraft you want, there's every chance that in the future (maybe 3 or 4 years from now) it could be a very successful purchase.

It’s been reported the Embraer’s were a millstone around Flybe’s neck for a long time. The order dated back to the 2000’s when they had ambitions to become a serious player in the European market and felt they needed something bigger than all the Dash 8 Q400’s they bought brand new from Bombardier to achieve that objective. I suspect Flybe would still be around today if it wasn’t for the Embraer order, but we’ll never know.

As for Flybe 2.0, I think it’s madness to launch an airline right now and I suspect the more profitable parts of the old Flybe network have already been snapped up by the likes of Loganair, Eastern, Blue Islands, etc. I see Aer Lingus Regional have recently moved into Belfast City to operate some of the ex-Flybe routes to Great Britain. It will have to be a somewhat different business model to the old Flybe in order to succeed. If they simply try to pick up where they left off or go head-to-head against some of the others that stepped in to fill the void, I fear it will become a bloodbath. After all, there was a reason why Flybe operated routes nobody else would touch and why they had a monopoly on a lot of routes.

All that said, I wish them luck.

It’s a cracking time to agree lease deals. I’m told by a friend who works in a bank with an aviation sector - that well known airlines are defaulting on aircraft payments. Banks are stuck as no one else wants them. Bleak industry at present.