Luton, you heard it here first!

There’s been some talk that the website is a fake. However I’m not so sure, someone on PPRune claimed that various handling agents at LTN had been approached by BWAA, and that the old SilverJet lounge has been taken over by an unknown company. A company under the name “British West African Air” was also regisitered with Companies House on the 12th of March.

The site doesn’t even work for me, so I can’t mavigate more than the home page.

Rdc, Africa is an area where demand is still on the rise despite the global economic situation, and west africa is somewhat underserved point-to-point from the UK. So I can see where the demand might be there. I doubt though, that they will be able to fill anything much larger than an A320 or possibly A321. The rumour I heard though was 767s, which would make sense because Silverjet probably left behind a number of things designed for 767s (including south stand parking) and TOM carry out heavy maintenance on 767s at Luton for a number of airlines.

Whilst numbers are still rising to Africa, they are from a very low base, so in real terms, even with decent growth rates, the number of new travellers is minimal.

I would agree that it would need to be a BMed style operation if it were to succeed at all. However, I would still strongly have my doubts that the airline will get off the ground because they will struggle to get funding in the current climate, especially for a start-up airline which will rely on low volume markets to succeed.

Because of the nature of traffic to Africa, airlines like BA do very well, and so attracting the premium traveller will always be difficult (many of those travelling on business to West Africa do so frequently and so are members of strong frequent flier programs, furthermore you tend to find they expect the best service as a perk of taking a job which involves periods of time in this area, so companies tend to fly them with the likes of BA in order to attract them to the job int he first place). Therefore they will probably end up serving little more than the low yielding VFR traffic between London and West Africa, which will make their business plan even less attractive when seeking funding.

The site doesn’t even work for me, so I can’t mavigate more than the home page.

Rdc, Africa is an area where demand is still on the rise despite the global economic situation, and west africa is somewhat underserved point-to-point from the UK. So I can see where the demand might be there. I doubt though, that they will be able to fill anything much larger than an A320 or possibly A321. The rumour I heard though was 767s, which would make sense because Silverjet probably left behind a number of things designed for 767s (including south stand parking) and TOM carry out heavy maintenance on 767s at Luton for a number of airlines.

Hmmm, it all seems a bit dubious to me! Dodgy website, difficult destinations to serve (especially from LTN). I’m gonna guess this one won’t fly!