milkyway88

Slightly OT - It is Eddie Stobart Logistics PLC with the financial problems, that required a rescue loan earlier this year. That company is separate to the Stobart Group Ltd who own part of Flybe/Connect Air/Virgen Connect (whatever they are called today). Stobart Group Ltdappear to be in ok financially.

Sealink

I wonder if they have realised that a brand new Virgin Connect could renegotiate staff wages, airport fees etc.

MrSimonR

They never started selling tickets for S20 on the route. It's been on hold the whole time.

rapidex

It was on the local TV news, so stopped selling or never started amounts to the same thing.

dougzz

My thought exactly. Buy the parts they really want from Administrators.

PZE

Presumably any PSO routes (obviously LHR-NQY) - not sure which others they have - would have to be retendered in event of administration. Tying into another thread, I wonder if Willie Walsh’s departure might change BA’s attitude to ever flying to “places like Newquay”.

LimitingFactor

I'm sure it would be retendered. However, the original tender was for NQY->LHR or NQY->LGW or NQY->STN or NQY->SEN or NQY-LTN - so I'd be rather worried that noone would tender for the useful ones like Heathrow and Gatwick as they didn't have slots they'd want to 'waste' on the route. Going to Southend might still provide a London link, but would be no good for flight connections. Of course, would be a dream if BA took it on, biggest pain for me whilst traveling is not having an official connection between Flybe into T2 and BA out of T5.

LF

PZE

yes, that would definitely be the dream (I missed a BA to BE connection in the last year due to a baggage reclaim failure - fortunately homebound not outbound). I don’t fully understand how this works but think it may be the case that BA could get the slots back if they took on the route, and after another 2 years would be free to reassign them to other routes.

I guess the alternative might be something like Stobart into SEN which isn’t that appealing.

Worcester

Once the rumours like this start, it must affect sales. Very sad if they do go, only used them a couple of times, but glad they were there.

allturnleft

Flybe are so important to UK domestic aviation

Its a shame BA didn’t buy them

Keep fingers crossed

Southampton airport would be decimated if they went along with a few others

Vinotraveller

How realistic would it have been for a consortium to have purchased them and become a BA franchise like Cityflyer? I am not at all knowledgeable in such matters but I imagine it would have made the whole thing far more attractive to passengers in terms of connections etc.

NickB

BA pulled out of domestic (and European) inter-regional flying over a decade ago. They in fact sold their regional subsidiary (BA Connect) to Flybe at the time. It would not have made much sense for BA to then buy Flybe when they had done precisely the opposite, viz. pulling out of the inter-regional market.

dddc

How often does sense come into making decisions when it comes to airlines?!

Kgmm77

Flybe’s business model competes with BA as much as it complements (thin non-stop secondary markets routes vs hub and spoke). It’s a completely different strategy.

BOH

It certainly would, I use SOU alot when flying to AMS, MAN, CDG, NCL and a few others as it is only 35 miles down the road for me. I would reckon some 70% of all pax commercial plane movements at SOU are Flybe so it will hit it very hard, probably Exeter too. The trouble is, now this news has come out it may well hasten the demise of the airline as forward bookings (and hence cashflow for today) will pretty much dry up within days. I don't think they will survive this time sadly.

Incidentally the old landside BA lounge is still there at SOU but is now available to hire as a meeting room venue. ISTR it was unmanned when it was BA and eligible pax were given a security code at check-in to access it. It also meant you could guest in pretty much who you liked