lcohen999

edited for wrong number

jral

I only heard about it about an hour ago. Terrible news, though of course, not unexpected at all. I feel awful for strandees & staff.

So I'm typing this from a hotel room in Dorval. (the Quality Hotel) I just looked out my window, and I see at least 6 television news cameras milling around the front door of the building next door: 7730 Cote de Lisse. Two cops just showed up too, but they're driving a Grand Cherokee. (?) The building is not labled, but there's Jetsgo stickers in the windows. Should be an interesting afternoon.

A 'scrum' just started and a woman exiting the building looks close to tears.

WillTravel

I think the average consumer would rightly assume that if an airline is allowed to fly in Canada's heavily regulated marketplace, it is safe to fly.

taupo

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servl...BNStory/Front/

Waaaaa.

Simon

If the average consumer feels that it is reasonable and sustainable to fly from YYZ-YVR for $1 or $59 or whatever the ridiculous prices have been, then the average consumer is a moron.

IT's just great that LCCs can come into a market, hammer the "legacy" (and for sake of argument, though this is cringe-worthy for WS haters and admirers alike, I'm including them in "legacy" for this diatribe) airlines with low, unsustainable fares, hang around for a while due to low labour costs, and then go up in smoke having dealt the legacy guys severe blows in the meantime, and setting an expectation amongst the public as to what prices "should" be. Which then the next fly-by-night operation can pick up on.

mtacchi

Well no big surprise here.
I reported 6 weeks ago that the few friends I had working there were jumping off the sinking ship lke rats. Leblanc should be banned from Canadian Aviation.

ac/elite

I think that the average consumer hurt by this spends far less time traveling or thinking about how the airline industry works than you or the rest of us here do. My guess is that many of the vacation travelers hurt by this are infrequent travelers spending for them a lot of money to go on vacation.

If you see a television on sale really cheap at Future Shop and you rarely buy a television because it is a huge expense for you, but you really need a new television, do you think about the television manufacturing industry and how buying a cheap TV might mean they are not making enough money and they or Future Shop therefore might go out of business and not be able to service your warranty? If you're like most, you probably just buy the television because it is the best TV you can get for what you can afford to spend.

cedric

Some other interesting tidbits from the CCAA filing:

-Average age of MD-83s was 10 years.
-Average age of Fokker 100 was 12.5 years.
-Some engines were leased on a power by hour basis so that SG could react to market demand more effectively
-Ramp, Flight Attendants and airport service agents were unionized
-All wages will be paid until the "close of business" 11 March
-The airline was profitable in the first year of operations (net earnings $781,000)
-The airline lost $9,614,000 the following year (July 2003-June 2004)
-As at December 2004, the airline had a negative net worth
-Airline was being prepared to go public in April 2004, when it was worth $450 million
-Westjet accessed SG's load factor, competitor and internal computer systems starting in Fall 2003
-SG believes that a portion of Westjet's quarterly loss in December 2004 of $65 million was responsible for depleting SG's resources
-SG also cites "disparaging" remaks made to financial markets by Beddoe
-On 7 March, NAV Canada began the process to seize SG aircraft: the matter was resolved
-SG considered continuing to operate a limited schedule in order to return passengers that had already began travel to their original destination, but it was not found to be feasible
-All SG aircraft are now in Canada and will be stored in YVR, YYZ, YUL and Quebec City.

-As part of CCAA one option that SG is considering is to form partnerships or service agreements in order to restart limited operations
-SG intends to vigrously persue Westjet proceedings
-SG has asked the court for permission to "settle claims of customers and suppliers that are in dispute"

-"The present petition is well-founded in fact and in law"

Shareholder

As the person who wrote the "Caveat Emptor" post, I am amazed at the naivite you express, and the disbelief of those at the airports today who did not learn anything from the Christmas debacle, and got sucked in by those $1 fares! Get real, consumer protection only goes so far.

Anyhow, I am not the first to take this view. Check this website out:

http://www.jetsgosucks.com

If you can get onto it...be warned, it is slower than FT as it is being run off a PC in someone's basement.

Super Larry

I guess everybody should also be reading all the fine prints of every contract we signed, as well as look at every books, websites and newspaper chronicles before buying a DVD player?

You should also know that we are a small percentage of a even smaller minority of people that are interested in airlines and aircraft. For the majority of the population, an aircraft is a mean of transport, period. If it's allowed to fly by the Canadian authorities, then why should every single individual should take hours of search on an airline?

Maybe the canadian population is taking a lot of things for granted..

3 days by bus to FLL, one day to visit and 3 days to come back. If you ever do that, I'll pay the fare for the bus!

You are not reading do you? Did I mentioned that the customers should be compensated?

My comment was related to the arrogance of the individual who wrote it.

back seat

Uh oh . . . . maybe West Jet will be in for a very rough ride now.

cedric

Except, SG rarely had such fares. All of their seat sales at these rates required a round trip purchase with a purcase of a regularly-priced (higher than their lowest one-way normal seat sale price) fare. The only exception were the Sunday night fares when a very limited amount of seats were sold at $1 on a one-way basis.

Super Larry

Geez, I thought that everything coming from your keyboard was the truth...now I'm reading that you're barely copying other peoples views...

robsawatsky

I think blaming the victims (passengers in particular) is nothing but mean-spirited despite the protestations otherwise that have been posted so far.

Yes, you can assign a portion of the responsibility for any situation when there is a negative fall-out and a significant level of risk should have been understand by any reasonably informed person. But you still don't blame the victim. Sort of like blaming the victim of a mugging because they were in an area KNOWN for this problem but perhaps only REASONABLY known by the locals not by tourists. While Jetsgo has had some negative press, there have also been assurances that they would be in business for a long time. Is the typical passenger Jetsgo passenger supposed to be an investigative journalist? Was there really any solid evidence to assume that Jetsgo was not long for this world or just speculation? Yeh, being a bit of a follower of the aviation industry, I might have been a bit cautious about booking on Jetsgo. Even then I hadn't heard anything about their imminent demise even though it is apparent now that they were having trouble settling up with creditors, including NavCanada. So, perhaps I might have still bought a ticket with them last week.

I believe the key is being "informed". Since Jetsgo was a private operation, the level of information was much less than it would have been for AC or Westjet in similar circumstances. They could get away without making announcements about financial difficulties since they have no public disclosure requirements about matters of material interest to shareholders.

boymimbo

I wouldn't fly Jetsgo today. But when I had to move out here on short-notice, SG was really the cheapest and only choice. I was low on monet. They transported our pets safely, and my experiences with my few YYZ-YVR runs on SG were fine and inexpensive.

I didn't like the MDs much, and I haven't been on SG on more than a year, even though the ticket prices in many cases, were way lower then WJ or AC. I guess I attribute that to loyalty and poor travel times, and the fact that my wife gets nervous about flying on planes where the engine is next to you (she won't sit in row 3 on a Dash 8 either!)

Most people who booked on SG for today probably booked their tickets a while ago, before the recent mechanical problems arose. There is a very large segment of the population (probably a good 90%) who base their travel arrangements on "best price" and "flight times". They don't care who the carrier is. They know the service won't be there, but they'll bring their food on board; they like to have their own choice, rather than "Chicken or Pasta?" And they'll save some bucks too. How many deaths have been attributed to Jetsgo? Zero. That's a safe airline, despite its recent problems.

We all take risks when we fly that the airline might be insolvent. Look at all of us on AC who flew when it was bankrupt. I did, because I wanted the airline to survive, but it felt very risky.

The fact is that the removal of all of that capacity will raise ticket prices and will make travel more expensive for me. The loss of jobs, both direct and indirect, will cause hardship. All of the travelers left stranded are suffering today. How many of them have the money to buy another ticket, or have the opportunity to even use miles?

So yes, I do feel sorry for everyone involved who took advantage of paying $1 instead $200 for their ticket.