BREAKING: Is Flybe on the verge of administration (again)?

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• LewisB says:

  13 Jan13 January 09:41

  If Flybe went under it’s likely Southampton and Exeter airport would go with it at a minimum. Belfast City and Cardiff also hit massively.

  • TripRep says:

    13 Jan13 January 09:50

    Also plenty of Scottish airports would be severely affected

    • Fraser says:

      13 Jan13 January 13:14

      I don’t think I’ve used FlyBe once for EDI-LHR, even if cheaper. Flying more slowly to T3 with smaller baggage allowance made no sense unless it’s to connect to VS with bags checked all the way.

• Andras says:

  13 Jan13 January 10:03

  From the Guardian live coverage:
  Rob Burgess, editor of frequent flyer website headforpoints.com, says Flybe appeared to making progress — but has struggled through the quiet winter trading period.
  “The new strategy seemed sensible, moving away from leisure routes and focusing on ‘visiting friends and family’ and business travel. The least cost-efficient aircraft have been removed from the fleet and new routes have been announced…”

  Pretty flawed point in my opinion — this was exactly the time when flybe cancelled a bunch of flights from the end of October, eg to Milan and the north of Germany. How can you argue this is moving away from leisure routes and focusing on ‘visiting friends and family’ and business travel? I have only seen ‘visiting friends and family’ and business travellers on the Birmingham-Hamburg flights, and they were packed. Maybe they should not have sold the tickets for £50 but doubled them, these are exactly the people who have price-inelastic demand.

  • Rob says:

    13 Jan13 January 10:27

    I was at the Virgin Connect launch event, remember 🙂 This is Mark Anderson’s stated strategy – dump all the low yield holiday traffic and focus on business and what they call VFF (‘visiting friends and family’).

    They are also increasing ticket prices, because you’re right about the elasticity of this market.

    What they found was that EC261 – combined with their reliability issues – made low cost tickets pointless. Selling someone a £10 flight when there was a 5% chance they would be due Euro 200 of EC261 because the flight would be late or cancelled was not clever.

    • Andras says:

      13 Jan13 January 11:21

      Do you mean that selling tickets at a price of £100-150 instead of £50, with no competitors offering direct flights, for a route that seems more like VFF/business instead of holiday, does not make a difference? I might be very wrong, just tried to infer what kinds of travellers were interested in the route from the sample I met during my weekly commute 🙂

• Bill says:

  13 Jan13 January 12:00

  Their app is dreadful

  • Shoestring says:

    13 Jan13 January 12:37

    maybe they outsourced it to the same outfit that put the Red by Dufry app together 🙂

    btw report this weekend that lounge (Plaza Premium?) didn’t allow guests in on the same DP card/ QR code

    more reports welcome

  • Allycat says:

    13 Jan13 January 14:05

    Not sure if its the app or the website but I get regular notifications on my phone every few weeks to check in for my upcoming EDI-EMA flight. That flight was in June last year.

    There were a large number of people caught out by the bag sizing guage and paying £35 each, despite the multiple warnings by email and text in advance of the flight.

• ADS says:

  13 Jan13 January 15:32

  “The three new shareholders had agreed to inject £100m into the airline.”

  in airline balance sheet terms, that doesn’t seem like much money to nurse an unprofitable airline through the lean winter months

• Jason Hindle says:

  13 Jan13 January 18:27

  Could the play here be going under and then a rebirth of sorts absent any pension liabilities and existing contracts of employment?

• zumodenaranja says:

  13 Jan13 January 18:41

  I understand the main point at issue is that FlyBe somehow failed to save for a rainly day and now faces a tex bill (APD) which they are unable to pay.

  Pretty poor financial control is that turns out to be true…

• marcw says:

  13 Jan13 January 19:15

  Flybe; a zombie airline

• Bill says:

  13 Jan13 January 19:25

  https://news.sky.com/story/flybe-begs-ministers-for-help-with-air-duty-bill-11908014

  They owe APD
  Administrators as early as Tuesday

  • marcw says:

    13 Jan13 January 19:52

    So they´ve been using taxes and duties for other purposes.

    • Shoestring says:

      13 Jan13 January 20:26

      I think they’re stuffed if they need a govt bailout/ guarantee – because the chances of that happening are not zero but pretty close

      • Stu N says:

        13 Jan13 January 21:09

        Yep, you always got to pay the tax man.

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