Flair struggling?

[oldncold]

IN 2 words fuel ,taxes.
CARBON TAX WILL ADD 11C LITER TO JET FUEL
PRICE OF OIL BACK OVER 70.0- US A BARREL =COST CUTTING FOR all operators ullc is a pipe dream will go upon smoke

[boeingboy]

100% for the reasons given already - the ULCC model never has and never will work in Canada......and if you look at Jetlines people are not putting money in it like it grows on trees. I have always said Jetlines will never go anywhere and if they do magically con someone out of money - it wont be for long. They even just switched aircraft types again........ugh.

As for Swoop - they will be around for a while. Just like Zip and Tango - remember them? They have a company with all the necessary items in place to make it go - but do you think it will make money - HA! not a chance...but that's exactly what it's supposed to do. It's actually going to save WestJet money. I suspect just like Zip and Tango it will be around for a few years and then get folded back into the mainline operation or be transformed into something like Rouge.

[Panama Jack]

I don't know what is going on at Flair, but I think it is too early to call their (or anybody else's) demise.

Here is my suspicion- $2 fares are not for every seat, on every flight, but in very limited quantity on those seats which are expected to go empty by their revenue management predictions. Why let those seats go empty or give them to jumpseaters/non-rev passengers when you can use them to create marketing sizzle and possibly sell, sell, sell ancillary products on them? This is the Ryanair business model and it works.

[confusedalot]

I agree with the Ryanair analogy. At least it proves to be possible. Hey, I'm baffled at Ryanair's success, but then again I am not a businessman.

Having said that, I recall decades ago when I was working for, at that time, a well known, fairly large, northern operator operating anything from light twins to large turboprops, and there was a buzz about getting 737's. Management was actually playing the field and actually did have 737 slots on the production line.

Turns out 737's were awfully popular and just having production line slots meant money....slots were bought and sold just like any other commodity And that's what they did, slots were sold and money was made. No 737's in the fleet.

So I guess there is in fact a way to make money in the aviation business apart from selling tickets. I suspect Ryanair was also, if not that particular scheme, or maybe they were, are perhaps in another less than obvious scheme to pull in capital. Stating the obvious, you can't make money by selling 2 dollar tickets in itself.

[Diadem]

$2 fares as a promotional idea mean nothing if they aren't advertising those fares; I haven't seen a single Flair ad since they took over New Leaf, and all of the buzz that New Leaf created has been forgotten over the last year. I have never seen any marketing of any kind with the Flair logo on it. One of my relatives is a travel agent, and when I mentioned Flair she had no idea what I was talking about. They need to get people to know who they are before they get pax in the seats, and they're failing miserably in that regard.

[atphat]

$2 fares as a promotional idea mean nothing if they aren't advertising those fares; I haven't seen a single Flair ad since they took over New Leaf, and all of the buzz that New Leaf created has been forgotten over the last year. I have never seen any marketing of any kind with the Flair logo on it. One of my relatives is a travel agent, and when I mentioned Flair she had no idea what I was talking about. They need to get people to know who they are before they get pax in the seats, and they're failing miserably in that regard.

If a travel agent doesn’t know about Flair, I would just assume they are terrible at their job. It’s not like sked service airlines are a dime a dozen in this county.

[CFM Symphony]

Didn’t Flair just increase their sked flying threefold recently? To me that screams of liquidity issues - trying to generate cash fast in order to meet current liabilities. That’s exactly what C3 did in one last, desperate attempt right before the curtain came down. It will either put them on the map, or bankrupt them.

Does Flair own their machines outright? If they do, and those old -400s aren’t worth much more that 3 or 4 mil, that’s a very low capitalisation cost and it could mean a much lower break even load factor than say WJ with its pricier NGs. I’d be curious to see how their CASM compares to the rest, but I guess we’ll never know.

Regarding the ULCC model viability in Canada my opinion is the following: in Europe and to a degree in the US, the ULCC model directly translates into ultra low fares for reasons already mentioned in above posts. There is absolutely nothing preventing a ULCC in Canada, but because that first C is so much higher here (again for the already stated reasons), it won’t manifest into ultra low fares - certainly not ones as low as anything in the EU. In the end if an argument has to be made regarding the unviability of the ULCC model in Canada, it has to be that there is a much smaller cost gap between LCCs like Rouge and ULCCs. That gap serves as a strong barrier to entry into the market and that’s why, even with 49% foreign financing approved, brand new ULCCs have struggled to take off.

Cheerio