Originally Posted by
Voice from the South West
It is a big step up for Skybus but as a local company at least they will be committed to this route and shouldn't be cancelling or delaying flights to prioritise private charters like Eastern did. The arrangements also look sensible, a wet lease from Blue Islands and then an arrangement with Aurigny that looks deeper than just a damp or dry lease arrangement, but at the same time means Skybus aren't shouldering the costs and responsibilities of operating a crew and engineering base from NQY on their own from scratch.
The latter was I think one of the factors putting off the other regional carriers as to make the route work they would have had to set up a new crew base at NQY.
I had forgotten this but interestingly the MD of Skybus, Jonathan Hinkles, was the CEO of Loganair for 8 years and so has experience of both running PSO routes and ATR services. It gives me some confidence that they can make a success of this and it won't be an Eastern amateur hour mark two.
I wasn't aware of that re Jonathan Hinkles before but that's really interesting (appointment press release below). Loganair seems to have been well run recently, certainly as a NQY passenger they have been the best option, and if he can take Skybus in a similar direction it could be a very positive development. Keeping it on-topic for the BA board, that presumably means he has overseen the growth of BA codeshares for LM so maybe it's not completely out of the question for Skybus to get there in future.
https://islesofscillysteamshipgroup....tor-of-skybus/