Flybe enters administration – what happens next?

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• Jjack says:

  4 Mar4 March 23:50

  At least Alitalia is safe 🙂 not sure about Norwegian though.

  • Jonathan says:

    5 Mar5 March 01:19

    How long for Alitalia though?

    I thought I read somewhere that the Italian government is not going to give them anymore help, and this was a news article that was written before Coronavirus became a worldwide public health scare.

    Norwegian, it’s hard to know how many people want to ultra cheap long haul plane travel, ultimately, if you go for a more premium service, you get all kinds of things included in the cost of the ticket, and things you really do want with cheaper airlines are just optional add-ons at generally inflated prices

• Youngtraveller says:

  5 Mar5 March 00:00

  Flew Flybe a few times to Paris from Cardiff. Sad to see it go, the staff were always friendly and some even remembered me as I became a regular. I remember how they always joked with kids who clearly just came back from Disneyland or were going there. Will miss them hope the staff manage to recover.

• BP says:

  5 Mar5 March 00:12

  The wife is flying Stobart tomorrow. Be keen to understand if Stobart included in this.

  • ChrisC says:

    5 Mar5 March 03:58

    Stobart is a totally separate company.

    Whilst it owns 30% of FlyBe it kept its existing flight operations and didn’t wrap them into Flybe and that was, as far as I recall, their position right from the start.

    Any flights it operated under contract to Flybe will cease unless stobart wants to keep operating those flights themselves

• Nick says:

  5 Mar5 March 00:25

  “the public will become even more paranoid about booking flight tickets”

  BA has pulled the Paris-US fare because too many people were booking. Doesn’t look to me that people are paranoid about travelling!

  Will be interesting to see what happens though. If it’s not total disaster by May then people will start booking holidays – either it’ll stimulate staycation demand (satisfying those who wanted Brexit!) or push lots of bookings to any airline with enough cash to last until then. If it’s total disaster then all bets are off. But then we’ve got bigger problems.

  Flybe’s demise will have Extinction Rebellion dancing in the aisles… ironically not thanks to anything they’ve done!

  • Bazza says:

    5 Mar5 March 01:01

    Staycation and brexit??? I think you are very confused man.

    • Alex W says:

      5 Mar5 March 06:20

      Yes how are the gammon going to get to Costa del Sol and Magaluf now?

      • Iain Miller says:

        5 Mar5 March 08:27

        There’s the kind of bigoted snobbery which helped push through brexit!
        Cheers!

  • J99 says:

    5 Mar5 March 07:48

    “Doesn’t look to me that people are paranoid about travelling”

    Declining passenger numbers, rather than one instance of high demand, suggest otherwise

    • Rob says:

      5 Mar5 March 08:53

      General view is that bookings are down 50%. I am guessing this is by volume, it will be a lot more by value without fully flex business tickets at BA etc.

  • Doug M says:

    5 Mar5 March 09:46

    Fares like the Paris-USA come and go all the time. They seldom run until the date they say as supply in the fare buckets necessary is exhausted.

• Martin says:

  5 Mar5 March 00:29

  The final arrival appears to have been just before midnight in ABZ – Olympic swimmer Hannah Miley was tweeting from onboard. It seems to have been briefly impounded in MAN before being allowed to fly:
  https://twitter.com/HannahMiley89/status/1235356182455468035

  The penultimate landing at BHD seems to have gone through the same:
  https://twitter.com/HollyHNews/status/1235301789207015425

• Alan Wan says:

  5 Mar5 March 01:04

  I booked a flight BHX-GLA, it was a Flybe operated flight with VS flight numbers and booked via Amex travel paying with an Amex Gold card.

  What is the best way to get my money back?

  • The Original David says:

    5 Mar5 March 02:20

    Chargeback on your Amex PRG. They normally refund the charge in a matter of minutes.

• Mikeact says:

  5 Mar5 March 01:10

  With their deep….very deep pockets, I fail to understand why Branson and Delta didn’t dig deep to keep it going. After all, they aquired it for their own interests ultimately…..nobody asked them to.
  Together with all the rubbish hype they all spouted, it was pretty obvious that it was never going to last…….extremely annoying and upsetting all round.

  • Tyna says:

    5 Mar5 March 02:12

    Perhaps the real purpose for purchasing FlyBe was asset stripping?

    • Mikeact says:

      5 Mar5 March 03:24

      Without wishing to take up too much space……a reminder. What a lot of wishful thinking.

      The airline had planned to rebrand as Virgin Connect later this year, following investment by a consortium including Virgin Atlantic. Mark Anderson, CEO of the consortium, Connect Airways said at the time, “Virgin Connect will be passionately focused on becoming Europe’s most loved and successful regional airline. It will offer travel that is simple and convenient with the personal touch. Our customers will naturally expect the same exceptional travel experience as they do with other Virgin-related brands. As part of the Virgin family, we now have a tremendously re-energised team”. Flybe quickly burnt through the consortium’s investment and had even sought a further £30 million investment from the consortium as part of a wider January 2020 government rescue package though this rescue did not proceed as Flybe did not meet certain government criteria.

  • The Jetset Boyz says:

    6 Mar6 March 07:46

    Virgin Atlantic apparently advised Flybe on Tuesday evening that it was unable to provide further support to the airline due to the impact of Coronavirus on its own bookings. Also, Flybe had just £5.7m of cash reserves but owed creditors more than £10m by today.

    It’s come to light that HMRC sought to wind-up the airline in January due to unpaid APD of £5.8m and a tax penalty of £844k.

• Curious Traveler says:

  5 Mar5 March 01:43

  I have €350 of Norwegian airmiles credit – will I lose this completely if the airlines goes bust? Am I protected if I book a flexible ticket in the future using this credit and pay the remainder with my credit card?

  Don’t want to risk losing this 🙁

  • Rob says:

    5 Mar5 March 08:57

    You are losing it.

    • Shoestring says:

      5 Mar5 March 09:06

      CT has a point, though – if he booked the flight he mentions with at least £1 on a credit card, he’d be covered by S75, in the sense that if N goes bust, they’d have to pay for an alternative flight

      if it were myself, I’d go above £100 on the credit card so that they wouldn’t even think of wriggling out of their liability (though that’s not strictly necessary)

      but is there actually a flight you want to take?, as credit card co would not alternatively refund you for your points if N goes bust (or for the normal list price of the flight – your points are counted as zero cost)

    • Jamie says:

      5 Mar5 March 11:19

      How likely are they to go under?

      • Rob says:

        5 Mar5 March 11:26

        Who knows? IAG/BA has €4 billion cash in the bank. Norwegian had £250m at the end of 2019 but will be burning it quickly.

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