Vocal Voices

It is said to be necessary to keep out of the way places connected to the modern world, and there is probably a lot of truth in that.

But the company doing so has (wrongly) held back payments it collected on the government's behalf, the Air Passenger Duty (APD), and those are now due, some £100m of them. It has also paid it execs phenomenal salaries.

The government is prepared to give Flybe more time, which is probably right in some ways, execs excluded, but it is also considering scrapping or modifying APD and that looks wrong. BA and Ryanair think so and others are weighing things up re a legal challenge.

I don't know what the answer is - a publicly owned airline to reach the (economically) unreachable? Probably.

Flybe's trading position has not been helped by the increase in business rail travel in recent years between places like London and Exeter / Manchester / Edinburgh etc. OK, it takes a bit longer, but it's city centre to city centre, pricing is competitive, and you can work on the train whilst you can't on the plane.

Where a business gets behind with its payments to HMRC, they generally get a bit of leeway to get themselves straight before the dogs are set loose on them, so no major concession there. Any number of football clubs can testify to that ….

I think Flybe is a different kettle of fish from a tour operator like Thomas Cook which was not rescued, and yes, regional connectivity to places like the Channel Islands, Belfast and the IoM are extremely important. There are such things, I understand, as Public Service Obligation routes. I suspect if Flybe does fold, there will be a temptation for the Government to go down the "franchise" route, in which case expect to see a lot more of Loganair ...

Flybe had to be bailed out only last year by a conglomerate that included Virgin Air.
Having to be bailed out again so soon afterwards seems to point to there being big problems with the firm.