Originally Posted by
WHBM
It's incorrect to compare Skybus with Ryanair, who they only took a few elements of the business model from - and the wrong elements.
Ryanair, after a false start with commuter prop aircraft which nearly finished them off, got going on London to Dublin, a trunk route which was already one of the largest city pairs in Europe, with regulated service, high prices, and many passengers forced by price to use an inconvenient rail/ship surface route. What an opportunity. And they started with cheap jet aircraft leased from Romania, moving on to still well-used 737-200s. Growth was steady and only as funds became available from other operations. Only in recent years, once their brand image became well established with substantial growth of the business have they moved on to new aircraft.
Skybus on the other hand started off on city pairs previously unserved (previously unserved for a very good reason of course), running on investors money rather than generated funds, and with all the costs of brand new aircraft from day one. Quite different.
I agree - they had, what 60 mill to start with with another 60 mill promised? Plus, they were renting newer planes and had an offer from CMH to build them their own hangar. That does sound a lot different than Ryan.
What's interesting is that even though they had new/newer planes, their turn around times were bad. It's all about butts in seats, and they were planning on 30 minute turnaround times because of the newer planes (no maintenance, fewer mechanical irops). I mean if you looked at the schedule for a single plane in a day it looked crazy.