There are now at least three or four Skybus threads. It may be a good time to merge them and put in an appropriate forum.

chrisny2, whilst I do not know anything about Skybus I can tell you from experience that you will absolutely not turn a 319 in 25 minutes unless you have an army of workerbees. You say that Skybus will not use jetbridges, well thats nice but please explain how the hell you are going to quickly and safely deplane passengers in wheelchair. I often fly B6's JFK, BOS flights to PBI and FLL and each flight consistently has a half dozen or more elderly passengers who have to use wheelchairs. With 150 passenger a jetbrdge and simultaneous rear deplaning our groundcrews still cannot deplane, service, refuel and board an airbus in less than 40 minutes and they have plenty of practice.. I just think that there plans are grand but terribly flawed. Likewise, without jetbridges how are you going to offer weather protection. Believe me bad weather will serious effect your passengers as you board and deplane. Bad weather will slow both actions considerably and simply aggravate passengers further. Theres nothing more annoying than sitting around in wet clothes. I don't wish skybus any ill will but I truely believe that they will not be able to deliver. Additionally, America west pulled out of CMH as it was working for them and they definitely have deeper pockets. I am interested to hear your opinions.

Columbus has the Nations best Oktoberfest, or so it says according to travel magazines and top 10 oktoberfests

Do come to the UK where both Easyjet and Ryanair do their turnrounds in 20-25 minutes all day long, and have done for years; Easy A319s have 156 seats, Ryanair's 737s have 189 seats.

Yes, and it rains here as well (of course ! ) and we have wheelchair pax here too. And there are a minimum number of groundcrew, who are usually handling agent staff rather than direct employees (even if they have been given the airline uniform to wear that day).

Incidentally, in the time it takes many airports to manoeuvre a jetbridge up to the aircraft, these two airlines have probably got most of the passengers off already.

If you buy two separate point-to-point tickets to get from coast to coast via CMH, and the first flight operates late into CMH causing you to miss the second, will they reaccommodate you? They're all "Don't be late. We'll leave without you." What if Skybus itself makes you late?

I guess you could call them up for rebooking... oh, that's right.

You are missing my point. I still contend from my own personal experience that elderly passengers and those with disabilities need help boarding and deplaning. I stand by my statement that Skybus will not turn an airbus with 156 passengers in anything close to 25 minutes. JetBridges are fast and efficient. Additionally we at JetBlue use aft mobile stairs in conjunction with jetbridges at many of our downline stations and we cannot make these turns. Additionally it may rain in the UK and Ireland but neither country is subject to the seasonal temperature extremes that are common in the US. Parts of upstate NY recorded 20 feet of snow this past winter.The extremes in the weather will not only slow down airstair boarding but make it downright miserable.

There seems to be a lot of skybus haters in this forum.

I'm biased, but I hope they succeed. I agree that on the revenue side it will be tough. You can only sell so much advertising space, drinks, trip insurance, snacks, etc. On the cost side, they will definitely have an advantage over the legacy carriers in terms of labor, slotting fees, reservation agents, customer service, maintenance (new fleet and only one type of aircfraft), etc.

One of the things that might give them a chance is the fact that they are creating a new customer segment for their product. In addition to taking leisure travellers away from other cariers, they are targeting people who normally wouldn't do a weekend vacation or visit family/friends, etc. due to the cost.

I also believe that they will eventually fly point to point instead of connecting through CMH. They only received a handful of planes from their first complete order, so when they take full delivery, hopefully we'll see more routes.

I do agree that it will be ugly when there are delays/cancellations and everyone is trying to rebook new flights as they have no 800 number. But I guess that is the risk one is taking by purchasing dirt cheap fares. I think expectations have clearly been set so people should know what they are in for.

Just my .02

You've noticed that, too? I'm jumping around the several Skybus threads, defending an airline I'll never patronize. I would have been a Skybus regular in my college days, and I expect more than a few Ohio State students will be thrilled with these folks.

I think what concerns so many FTers is the idea that other carriers will lower their already low standards of customer service in response to the competition. That hardly seems likely. Ryanair certainly competes with the likes of BA and other traditional carriers, but other carriers did not match Ryanair's service approach.

I think it would be great for all of us if the carriers started to distinguish themselves. As it stands, there is not a world of difference between the best Economy Plus seat on United, and a middle seat on Southwest. I'd like to see more variety.

It's not "hate" -- I'd love to see a new innovative US airline (although, in the current crowded environment, I really can't imagine why anyone would put their own money into launching a new domestic carrier).

It's just that the math doesn't work here. I went through it in an earlier post. It is IMPOSSIBLE to make money offering $10 and $50 airfares in the United States. It's a business model with no hope of success.

You are missing the point of their pricing structure; of course Skybus will lose money on $10 and possibly even $50 fares. They will make that money up with baggage fees, priority boarding fees and (most likely) the selling of any and everything possible at 30,000 feet. Money also gets made on the comissions they get from hotels, attractions, rental car reservations etc etc. NK down in FLL is using this exact same model which works very well for Ryanair.

Ryanair is a shopping system that happens to fly people. Most of their money is made off of selling incidentals that only happen when you buy the ticket.

Look at it like this. Assume you buy a ticket that Skybus breaks even on for the flight part of your trip. Then you check a bag for $5 and assume Skybus gets $4 profit, buy priority boarding $10, pure profit, buy a soda and snack for $4, Skybus gets $2 profit, book a hotel via their website $5 commission/profit, book a rental car via their website $5 commission/profit. These numbers can add up pretty quickly based on my example, assuming Skybus breaks even with the ticket they just made close to $26 profit from this passenger. Now assuming that thier fares average out to them breaking even across the whole plane on a flight and all of their passengers average about $26 in additional charges they made $3,744 on that flight. Not too shabby by any airlines standards.

Granted their are overhead costs and HQ staff has to be paid etc etc but that $3,744 across the whole system can add up pretty quickly.

Here are the exact numbers for Ryanair:

Scheduled passenger revenues increased by 27% to
Euros: 1,433.4m due to a combination of increased passenger
volumes on existing routes, the successful launch of new bases
at Liverpool, Shannon, East Midlands, Pisa and Cork and a 1%
increase in average fares.

Ancillary revenues increased by 36% to Euros: 259.2m, a faster
growth rate than passenger volumes, reflecting a strong
performance in non-flight scheduled revenues (primarily car hire,
hotels and travel insurance), on board sales and other ancillary
products. Ancillary revenues continue to grow at a significantly
faster rate than passenger volumes.

http://www.ryanair.com/site/about/in...nualreport.pdf

So, while this 259m euros isn't most of Ryanair's revenues, it is most of its operating profit.

Ancillary review will NEVER make up the gap here. What are they going to get -- $5 per pax for luggage? Faced with a charge, more folks will carry it on. And how many $2 cokes are you going to sell? My guess is one per pax. Priority boarding revenue will be near zero, as the cheapskates who book these fares aren't going to fork over another $10 to get a better seat. And biz travellers will be few and far between on SkyBus.

I know some of the European carriers make some money booking hotels on their websites, but the market for that in the US will be very small. It's a very mature market, and I see little reason to believe SkyBus pax will shift their hotel bookings to Skybus from the established players.

Spirit Airlines doesn't seem to think that'll work either. That's why they're selling $6 and $69 airfares. They're following the same business model and they have a lot of longish flights too, maybe not CMH to BLI, but Guatemala City to FLL, for example.

SkyBus is apparently also involved in less-than-candid timeshare sales on their website.

http://www.airliners.net/discussions....main/3377886/

This may be "yuckier" than I thought.

Spirit sells very few $6 airfares -- usually limited to a couple Wednesdays 3 months from now. A lot different than selling 10 $10 seats on all your flights.

I'm not sure Spirit will be successful in their current "unbundling" strategy, but their odds are exponentially higher than Skybus'. They are a "real" airline with a "real" business strategy.