Well, there were some similarities to Ryanair, but also some major differences. For instance, their major hub is right outside of London, and they fly to places people want to go (major leisure destinations, large European cities, flights for London's foreign community to return home, etc). Ryanair also faced competitors with much, much higher fares, such that there weren't good travel alternatives.

Had Skybus set up shop in one of the largest US cities and flown to secondary airports where people wanted to go (like places in Florida, for example), they would have had a shot. But these were dumpy markets. I like both Columbus and the Triad, but these are not exactly vacation hotspots. Heck, in Columbus, after many unsuccessful years, Doug Parker pulled America West's hub even though (at the time) he was reinventing the airline as a true low fare carrier. At Greensboro, Continental's "Lite" low fare experiment proved a complete dud. As Bethune later remarked, they were flying to places where no one wanted to go.

So is anyone surprised that Skybus couldn't make a go of it where others (with slightly better business plans and more experience) had failed?

Not surprised. Their expansion was reaching a point where I thought they might have been able to fill enough seats to keep them going, but they never got there. Sucks for the cities that just lost all that service and the jobs, particularly CMH and GSO.

Yeah, especially because those cities suffer repeat failures. In addition to CO Lite, GSO had Eastwind a few years ago. CMH got de-hubed by America West. Indeed, it was that de-hubbing that made Columbus vulnerable to the salesmanship of Skybus' founders: "Look, you can be a hub again!"

Considering that America West -- which survived (without bankruptcy!) the onslaught of Southwest at PHX and LAS -- thought uncontested CMH wasn't worth their time, should have given "realists" in Columbus second-thoughts. Like most airline CEOs, folks like to give Doug Parker a hard time. But he's a smart businessman, and manages to keep his airlines solvent. This should have been a huge red flag.

But people like to dream. After all, some big Wall St. types were willing to invest. I guess the "smart money" can be pretty dumb, too.

No scheduled pax service seems to last at that airport: Shuttle America, Delta, Skybus...who's next?

Yeah, but this one was hardly Wilmington's fault. FWIW, I think Skybus was there for less than a month.

Wilmington service would work, but it would have to be the right type of service. Probably something like low fare, point-to-point to a place folks would want to go. Like Florida. Or maybe Boston (it's not that far, but a bad drive). With a ton of nonstop service just up the road in PHL (like 25 miles), you're not going to attract much interest with a couple of spoke runs on an RJ to a hub. Nor were you going to attract enough people with flights to Greensboro or Columbus.

Skyway Airlines, the Midwest Connect partner, stopped flying on April 5 too... (This had been planned for a while, ALL of Midwest Connect is going to Skywest, instead of just some of it.)

Well I got bit in the butt with the sudden closure of business of SkyBus ... I live in Charlotte and flew out of Greensboro on Friday afternoon to Chicopee , MA .. " unlucky me "

I was going up to Vermont to visit family and friends and found out about it late on Friday night ... I ended up calling US Airways to see about trying to use some airline miles to fly home or buy a one way ticket ... The person I was speaking to said it looked like US was going to try and help out passangers like they did with ATA and Aloha ...

In turn he has me going standby ( $ 50 friendly fee ) on a 8:30 am flight to Charlotte but of course I still need to get the 90 + miles up to Greensboro to get my car and drive back to Charlotte .... Of course who knows how many other peoeple are on stand by and when I will really get in the air ...

To be continued .....

Last night, I landed in Columbus on a United flight. I saw many Skybus planes parked all over the airport. They closed the entrance to Skybus' gate areas. I always wanted to try Skybus, but never had a chance to.

I feel bad for stranded passengers and employees of Skybus.

I started this thread before Skybus started operations and was excited about the new airline. I never thought that in only 23 pages of discussions over the period of less than 2 years that the airline would go under.

It is so sad to see four Skybus planes parked at their gates at Greensboro/High Point. The engines are covered for protection from the elements. What will happen to them in the short term...sit at GSO until someone buys them or will they be ferried somewhere?

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.

The question is now how many clueless consumers will still buy a ticket on Frontier (losing money continually for awhile now) or Spirit (privately held, no numbers released, but business model very close to Skybus and said to be unprofitable), get burned (if) the airline shuts down unannounced, and then get on CNN and complain because they showed up to the airport with no flight and/or stuck and having problems getting another carrier to take them home.

Also have to wonder about VS, but at least there are deeper pockets there.

That won't help people coming in and out of CMH, though... I loved flying JetBlue, but when they pulled out of CMH they became useless to me. Now I get to watch my points expire...

Deeper pockets maybe, but also better leadership as well. No point in sticking around if you're losing money...

Well, I hate to quote myself, but ya'll heard it here less than 6 months ago... it's a shame for the employees who are now out of a job, but overall this is a good thing for the industry.

From: http://www.news-record.com/apps/pbcs...TAFF/369006678