Without trying to sound the least bit facetious, I thought the ‘logo’ was a joke – it immediately looked like a taliban hi-jacker to me. I’m sure the logo was in place first but to the uneducated non-Corsican, who’s going to look at the logo and think anything else?

Point taken about the train service to Manchester from London – but one thing that has been mentioned since, which is a good point, is that they are MORE expensive that BA and BD from LHR to MAN.

If they get rid of that pricing structure, wouldn’t that be a broken PROMISE? You would have a serious amount of egg on your face if your main selling point was promoted as a promise and it was soon replaced by a more realistic alternative pricing structure! Can’t see the competition letting that one pass without a great big slanging match and adverts in the newspapers!!

There are serious flaws in their business plans, I feel. I don’t see how they are likely to make a penny in profit. I know the directors seem to have an aviation background, but I still have serious doubts. Pilots may be clever enough to be able to fly planes but that doeesn’t make them capable of RUNNING the airline.

I hope they prove me wrong – except on Tenerife where they will be…. erm ‘competing’…. with Monarch Scheduled!!

I guess we will just have to wait an see once/if they ever get off the ground.

What are people’s opinions on this planned airline? Do you think they will become a success or another failed airline?

My opinion is that although they will only have direct city-pair competition on a couple of their routes (JER – flybe. and TFS – Monarch Scheduled), they will also be operating to cities that have hefty daily Ryanair or easyJet services (or both in the case of Rome) from other London Airports. I still believe that price is what matters on short sectors to most passengers and if Ryanair and easyJet can offer lower fares to the same cities, I can’t see a big rush away from them to be honest.

The only routes Fly-Now will operate that will be lo-co competition free are Lisbon, Valencia and Manchester.

Lisbon has been tried already by Go but was dropped – poor loads?.
Manchester is too much hassle to fly to when trains will be cheaper and probably quicker than checking in at LTN, flying to MAN, picking up luggage and then getting train to Manchester Piccadilly. Also, I don’t think Manchester is a particularly cheap airport to operate in to.
Valencia – not sure the demand for this one will be able to keep it afloat. Alicante is well served from LTN and VLC is quite a bit north of ALC. Lots off people flying to ALC actually head south of ALC to Torrevieja etc. This is why Murcia is the better choice and has been recently discovered by the low-cost boys.

I wish them luck but I have severe reservations that it will be possible to make a proifit by selling every seat at the same price on every flight to the same city every day of the week and only pushing it up £5 in the summer and down £5 in the winter.

Monarch Scheduled used to offer every seat on a given flight at the same price but the big difference there was that the price of a seat depended on the date-band and then day of the week within that date-band. For example, weekends during school holidays would be more a fair bit more expensive than a Wednesday when schools were not off. It’s a rather simple form of yield management – granted, but the complete lack of this, I think, will be Fly-Now’s downfall.

Hey Ren….

A cracking selection of photos you’ve demostrated there! Especially pleased to see some Monarch activity amongst your photos. Do you like the new livery/uniform? What did you think of the ZB onboard service? Would be interested to hear an honest opinion from you.

Glad you had a good trip for photos – hope the tummy gets better quickly!!!

Dean.

That should be a lesson to Gulf Air of how to mix blue, gold and white. A lovely photo.

Im going in.

I see there isn’t a lot of information on your profile. What is your job at bmibaby?

Steve.

Well done mate! I obviously didn’t work for Monarch in the 60’s (on account of being born in the 70’s!) but I used to talk to one of our hosties who flew with Monarch from the start and she was telling me about the trips to Australia (and round the world trips) they used to do. If they done these flight regularly again, I’d be first in line at Staff Travel’s door!!

Dean.