• This topic has 138 replies, 52 voices, and was last updated 4 years ago by cb200.
Viewing 40 posts - 81 through 120 (of 139 total)
  • Flybe…. Should the taxpayer fund a failing airline?
  • zippykona
    Full Member

    Glad we had one last flight to Cornwall.

    3 and a half hours door to door. Crantock to Epsom.

    Not looking forward to the alternatives..

    Dickyboy
    Full Member

    Surely if it was so vital and alternatives modes of travel were so untenable, they could have just put their prices up?

    cb200
    Free Member

    What do we reckon? Will I get my money back if I used PayPal?

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    zilog6128
    Full Member

    https://www.paypal-community.com/t5/PayPal-Basics/Flybe-Flights/td-p/2051633#

    potentially depends whether the payment was funded from your CC, or PayPal balance. Easy to say with hindsight, why would you not just make a payment to a floundering company with a CC though?

    EDIT: I’ve seen it suggested that if you’ve received your tickets, the transaction is complete and you won’t be covered under Paypal Buyer Protection. They do explicitly state that it isn’t any kind of insurance/guarantee/etc

    swavis
    Full Member

    I had flights booked from ABZ to BHX in July. Not looking forward to that drive now.

    Nobeerinthefridge
    Free Member

    The carrier said the impact of the coronavirus outbreak on demand for air travel was partly to blame for its collapse.

    Shocker, Aviation will blame anything they can, glad I’m out of that industry. Company I worked for made 200 people redundant at our place off the back of 9/11, when our biggest by far customers were Fedex and UPS – Parcels actually increased, predictably.

    alpin
    Free Member

    I don’t understand. As above, surely if they are that vital they can charge what they want as opposed to offering cut price flights and losing money in each customer they fly.

    Nobeerinthefridge
    Free Member

    I don’t understand. As above, surely if they are that vital they can charge what they want as opposed to offering cut price flights and losing money in each customer they fly.

    Subsidy junkies. BA never turned a profit on their London – Belfast route for the decades it ran, but they wouldn’t have done it for nothing.

    zilog6128
    Full Member

    I don’t understand. As above, surely if they are that vital they can charge what they want as opposed to offering cut price flights and losing money in each customer they fly.

    analyst on the news this morning was saying there were 2 main problems 1) they’d MASSIVELY ballsed up a few years ago and ordered too many or the wrong planes or something, from which they’ve not recovered and 2) on the routes which SHOULD be profitable, Easyjet/Ryanair etc come in and undercut them so they have to lower prices to match. It’s probably the out of the way, less popular/profitable routes (i.e. the ones which Easyjet etc have no interest in) which are/were regarded as “vital infrastructure”

    Personally I’ve never flown with them, and from a climate POV, one less airline can only be a good thing surely?

    cookeaa
    Full Member

    Listening on R4 this morning it was stated (can’t remember by who) that there is already interest in some of their routes/slots from other airlines, one would assume Sleasy-Jet and Ryan-scare are front runners there then.

    I’m just keeping an eye on share prices, TUI, IAG, Easyjet and Ryanair who all seemed to be starting to bounce back slightly after Corvid-19 announcements last week all went down by varying degrees this morning.

    worth buying one or the other while they’re down?

    crazy-legs
    Full Member

    I don’t understand. As above, surely if they are that vital they can charge what they want as opposed to offering cut price flights and losing money in each customer they fly.

    APD hits them disproportionately hard.
    The aircraft are right on that balancing point of being expensive to operate but not big enough (therefore not enough passengers) to break even. Baggage on them is very limited too so they can’t do the Ryanair trick of charging through the nose for extra weight.

    Personally I’ve never flown with them, and from a climate POV, one less airline can only be a good thing surely?

    Depends if those 8 million passengers a year now get in their cars to drive the length of the country. Can’t argue with how good they were regionally. A lot of airports now will be in serious trouble without Flybe. Southampton, Exeter, Newquay, Aberdeen… They all depend hugely on those flights and passengers.

    zilog6128
    Full Member

    Depends if those 8 million passengers a year now get in their cars to drive the length of the country.

    No, it doesn’t. We had this on another climate thread recently. Flying is ALWAYS worse than driving, even with just one passenger in a car. When you have multiple occupancy then driving is MANY times better. Non jet, regional flights (i.e. Flybe) are the absolute worst of the lot!

    All flying gives you is convenience, at massive environmental cost.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-49349566
    What type of plane is least bad for the planet?

    zippykona
    Full Member

    All flying gives you is convenience, at massive environmental cost.

    As could be said about me driving to Newquay rather than cycling.

    zilog6128
    Full Member

    sounds like you’ve talked yourself into a nice little cycle tour next time then! 😃

    dirkpitt74
    Full Member

    We had the MIL and Step-Son booked to go back to Jersey at Easter from Birmingham to go see his Dad.
    Taken the hit and forked out for easyjet from Liverpool as that’s the closest alternative for the dates.

    Hoping that Travel insurance will recover the cost of the Flybe flights we had booked.

    Would be nice if someone took over the Birmingham – Channel Islands route as it always seemed popular in the 10+ years we’ve been using it.

    oikeith
    Full Member

    Depends if those 8 million passengers a year now get in their cars to drive the length of the country

    With demand based pricing I assume train tickets would increase with more people searching and buying, then those that cant afford it jumping in the car instead.

    vanilla83
    Free Member

    Loganair are picking up 16 routes.

    Blue Island and Eastern Airways are still running their flights currently too

    blurty
    Full Member

    I used FlyBe a lot for work. They were good initially (6 or 7 years ago?) but have been utterly rubbish for the last couple of years – unreliable and very expensive.

    It’s a mercy killing

    superstu
    Free Member

    Always remember that despite the unlikeable corporate behemoths and the questionable environmental side of things, on the ground are hard working people who have lost their livelihoods.

    My wife went to work there yesterday and then watched matters unravel on the news, went in for a briefing at 9:30 today and cleared her desk along with everyone else.

    Will have a big impact on certain locations such as Exeter, Belfast, Southampton.

    phil5556
    Full Member

    @superstu sorry to read about your wife, it is very sad for all the staff.

    Tomorrow I‘ll be working with a girl whose husband has just lost his job. As have some other people that I know.

    It was quiet at work today without Flybe, there are 3 Dash 8s parked with tractors blocking them in, a sad sight.

    torsoinalake
    Free Member

    I am now on the train alternative to my usual Flybe flight back to Southampton. Delayed, cramped, hot, practically non-existent wifi/4g, and three times the price (for the price of a return first class ticket I could literally fly to America and back and have change left over).

    Minor inconvenience for me but there are a bunch of jobs gone today, and it is going to be game over for Southampton Airport if someone doesn’t pick up the route.

    crazy-legs
    Full Member

    No, it doesn’t. We had this on another climate thread recently. Flying is ALWAYS worse than driving, even with just one passenger in a car. When you have multiple occupancy then driving is MANY times better. Non jet, regional flights (i.e. Flybe) are the absolute worst of the lot!

    All flying gives you is convenience, at massive environmental cost.

    I hate simplified diagrammatics of “CO2 per passenger” because they always rely heavily on averages and bell-curves and rarely take into account the mulitude of external factors that can sway things. One big traffic jam on a motorway and the car efficiency falls through the floor (not to mention economic cost of congestion, road wear & tear, brake and tyre particulates etc). One load of circling in a holding pattern or being diverted to an alternate airport will screw the fuel & CO2 figures for a plane as well.

    The Bombadier Dash 8 that Flybe predominantly use is one of the most fuel-efficient turboprops out there – depending on exact length of the flight its fuel burn is somewhere in the region of 3L per 100km per seat – let’s assume it’s taking a full plane load (78 seats) on a 400km journey like Manchester – Exeter. That’s 936L of fuel total.

    If you put all those 78 people into cars for the same journey, it’s only more efficient if it’s 3 people per car or more (assuming car = 50mpg / 5.4L of fuel per 100km). As soon as you drop below 2 people per car average, the numbers start to even out and if you have 78 people all driving themselves 400km individually, you’re looking at twice the fuel burn.

    scotroutes
    Full Member

    Aye, but how often were the Dash 8s flying with a full complement of passengers, given that they were struggling to make any profit from the flights?

    TheBrick
    Free Member

    Flybe flights I went on from Southampton where always full IME. Take that free evidence for what it cost you. Airlines as a business in general olny make small profit so I can imagine it’s not hard to end up unprofitable with one or two over stretched commitments bringing down the company.

    crazy-legs
    Full Member

    Flybe’s average load across all routes was 75% according to Wikipedia which has figures going back years. So on a 78-seat Dash 8, that’s 19 empty seats, 59 people.

    For vehicles, I can only find this:
    https://www.statista.com/statistics/314719/average-car-and-van-occupancy-in-england/

    Which is a bit high because it includes vans and the figure is rounded up. I’m sure I’ve seen a figure around 1.2 for average car occupancy across all car journeys.

    Once you get down to figures like that, flying and driving are roughly equal for fuel burn. Flying gets more “abuse” though in a desperate effort to keep pushing “anything but cars” focus. Flying can be portrayed as elitist and unnecessary but cars, well everyone has one of them and they’re normal and soon they’ll be electric so that’ll help combat pollution and if we build another road that’ll ease traffic flow and … and…

    mrmoofo
    Full Member

    FlyBe were a shocking airline – terrible customer service, badly run and a business model that they did not change despite years of warnings that it was going wrong.

    They stranded me in Dusseldorf – and all their staff buggered off, the pilot has to come out and sort a problem that they had known about for a good 12 hours. The pilot, quite rightly, was not a happy bunny.
    Their customer service department would not answer phones- and did everything they could to avoid refunding / compenstation claims.
    The sad thing is that once again our Londoncentric transport system is shown wanting – at a time when we need to decentralise from the SE of England, the travel infrastructure is just not there.

    matt_outandabout
    Full Member

    Are we getting to a point where employee commuting choices are controlled/directed?

    No, it is personal choice and market forces.

    If employee (and family) accept a long distance commute, employer is OK with it and performance is not affected – why not?

    They are affected. Their chosen mode of transport has just been removed. They now have a choice. Market forces.

    Not many people are in fortunate position of either walking to work or having only a short commute; how short is short?

    That is a different length of string from flying across UK or some of Europe for work.
    This issue is about really big commutes, only made possible by (bankrupt) airlines undercutting other transport in cost and time while adding to our climate issues.

    Basically, FlyBe is market forces at work (and yes, that is partly influenced by climate, yay!) and so those who rely on it need to move on. I say this as someone who has staff on FlyBe about every other month as we can go from our office to head office (Edinburgh or Glasgow -> Southampton) really easily. I have posted on here before about trying to move to train and the extra time and cost involved. Well, the market just made the decision for us as a business and my CEO will be on GNER next week not FlyBe when she comes up. We as work had already put in place things to reduce our need to fly with FlyBe….

    zilog6128
    Full Member

    Once you get down to figures like that, flying and driving are roughly equal for fuel burn.

    so, in conclusion, if you massage ALL the figures in whatever direction suits you, they may be approximately equal. Fine. However you won’t be able to buy a new petrol or diesel car in (at most) 15 years; are electric planes on the horizon? I really don’t understand why you’re trying to argue the environmental benefit of flying, unless it’s an intellectual exercise and you just really like looking up numbers 😂

    oikeith
    Full Member

    but how often were the Dash 8s flying with a full complement of passengers

    Major routes most of the time I suspect, I’ve flown Exeter to Manchester, to Glasgow and to London City in the last few years and theyve been full everytime eachway.

    crazy-legs
    Full Member

    I really don’t understand why you’re trying to argue the environmental benefit of flying, unless it’s an intellectual exercise and you just really like looking up numbers 😂

    My original point was in relation to the first reply saying flying was environmentally worse than everything else. I’m not arguing it’s not bad, I know it’s bad and polluting.

    The point was the assumption that the journey still needed to be done and putting a plane load of people in cars isn’t going to be much better.

    And the other point was yes, all figures can be manipulated and the vastly simplified charts of CO2 are so dumbed down as to be near worthless.

    torsoinalake
    Free Member

    my CEO will be on GNER next week not FlyBe when she comes up.

    Maybe. Market forces are at work and some routes are already being taken over.

    thisisnotaspoon
    Free Member

    Once you get down to figures like that, flying and driving are roughly equal for fuel burn. Flying gets more “abuse” though in a desperate effort to keep pushing “anything but cars” focus. Flying can be portrayed as elitist and unnecessary but cars, well everyone has one of them and they’re normal and soon they’ll be electric so that’ll help combat pollution and if we build another road that’ll ease traffic flow and … and…

    Yeaaaaaaaa, but no. The alternative to flying Aberdeen to Southampton frequently isn’t driving, or even the train. It’s not going and either getting a job that you can commute to or moving house.

    The fact that FlyBe and the like exist enables that travel.

    mrmoofo
    Full Member

    Yeaaaaaaaa, but no. The alternative to flying Aberdeen to Southampton frequently isn’t driving, or even the train. It’s not going and either getting a job that you can commute to or moving house.

    The fact that FlyBe and the like exist enables that travel.

    That is the issue – I fly a lot for work (but stopping soon as I am retiring) but in all honesty, most of that travel could be eradicated with a Skype / Microsoft Teams culture. Business will chnage with a more tech savvy group coming into leadership positions.

    In current times, we fly away for weekend / commute long distances for work etc because easyJet and Ryan Air have allowed us to. I live in Cologne for a year, commuted very week and the flight never cost more that 90 Euro return.

    Back in the day, if you job was more that 30 miles away , you generally moved. Access to cheap flights may be good to expanding the mind but the effect of endless hen and stag parties going to far flung destinations cannot be good.

    crazy-legs
    Full Member

    The alternative to flying Aberdeen to Southampton frequently isn’t driving, or even the train. It’s not going and either getting a job that you can commute to or moving house.

    Plenty of people and companies need to meet. In person. Plenty of companies have regional sites.

    There are countless thousands of jobs like that where staff and customers need to be in one place. Where companies need to work together on a project by being in the same room. Where specialist equipment is used.

    It’s not as simple as saying “don’t live miles away” or “try Skype-ing”.

    Nobeerinthefridge
    Free Member

    Perhaps that HS2 money would be better spent improving rail infrastructure to the likes of the south west, wales etc? I mean, if we can build a **** off bridge to NI, surely we can get through the downs?.

    scotroutes
    Full Member

    Major routes most of the time I suspect, I’ve flown Exeter to Manchester, to Glasgow and to London City in the last few years and theyve been full everytime eachway.

    That being the case, why didn’t they put the prices up and, you know, make a profit?

    matt_outandabout
    Full Member

    but how often were the Dash 8s flying with a full complement of passengers

    I’ve done maybe 20 Edinburgh-Southampton return fights with them over 7 years.

    I can think of one that wasn’t full/a couple of spare seats.

    molgrips
    Free Member

    Yeaaaaaaaa, but no. The alternative to flying Aberdeen to Southampton frequently isn’t driving, or even the train. It’s not going and either getting a job that you can commute to or moving house.

    The fact that FlyBe and the like exist enables that travel.

    This is what I was going to post.

    There are countless thousands of jobs like that where staff and customers need to be in one place. Where companies need to work together on a project by being in the same room.

    As someone who flies a lot for work and is constantly told this ^^^ I disagree. We NEED to get better at working remotely. Flying all over the place just to be face-to-face simply should not be an option. The damage it causes is immense, and the people who cause it (e.g. my employer) are not accountable.

    If I had customer in New Zealand for one day of work, I wouldn’t be asked to go because it’s simply not feasible, I’d just manage remotely. The problem is that me flying to Glasgow or Madrid for one day isn’t feasible either, but people just haven’t acknowledged it. And Flybe and the rest are making it LOOK feasible because they just need to make a quid or two just like everyone else. The only option is for governments to do their bloody job and govern and stop us doing it.

    molgrips
    Free Member

    Perhaps that HS2 money would be better spent improving rail infrastructure to the likes of the south west, wales etc?

    Many times this. Again, governments since the 80s just letting everything happen and not caring, means we have a shit rail network that doesn’t do what we need it to.

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