Euromanx

[pongo]

For my part I've spent the day speaking to pissed off business contacts who come here via London City asking me how, if our economy is so brilliant, the main passenger carrier has gone tits up

 

Small airlines come and go - they always have: you can't extrapolate conclusions about a regional economy based upon what happens to a small company operating a very few routes. It's no different from any other business going technically bust.

 

Swissair went out of business. There was a brief crisis of confidence - but nobody ultimately concluded that Switzerland, in general, was in difficulty.

[manshimajin]

Its not happened in Jersey or Guernsey that have a steady flow of passengers yet obviously nobody makes money flying to the IoM.

 

From what I can make out air passenger volumes are not very different between IOM, Jersey and Guernsey. The IOMSPC takes a bigger share of journeys than the ferries do in the Channel Islands.

 

Air passengers and air travel as % total journeys p.a.

 

IOM 780,000 54%

 

Jersey 782,000 67%

 

Guernsey 869,000 72%

[Celt]

I'm led to believe but listening to MR and hearing it from the " Horses Mouth " the Transport Minister. That FlyBe and Manx2 are not doing the help mthey seem to be putting forward.

 

Apparently the Goverment has stepped in and said they would pay for getting the stranded people home, rightly so.

 

How far it geos beyond that , i don't know. But the Taxpayer is out of pocket once again.

 

I hope the people made umemployed, with no redundancy, soon find a job. Sad yey again to see the people on the shop floor lose out again as regards payment.

 

Nice posts btw Stu.

[TomTucker]

@oldmanxfella

cant agree more with you there on the harm the loss of london city route is doing to the Isle of Man.

 

Euromanx didnt go pop becasue the islands economy is on a down turn or the lack of bums on seats due to our population or the increased pressure from flybe.

 

They went to the wall because in 2004, 05 & 06*:

• They flew to stansted with empty planes
  
• They had 2 jets, and 4 turbo prop planes 2 of one manufacture and 2 of another these had huge costs assosiated with them including nearly 150 staff
  
• They had a reservations system that suited a MUCH bigger airline
  
• They bought london city route and southhampton routes off flybe and then ran them badly or dropped them in the case of southhampton
  
• They bought the liverpool route off emerald and had to have them operate it for them
  
• They swapped the Manchester route for Dublin with Aer arann and they had to again buy liverpool route off aer arann including have aer arann operate the route for them
  
• They failed to expand when opportunities presented themselves (Luton for example)
  
• They let manx2 get a foothold on belfast without any fight at all
  
• In Oct 07 they sold the only assets the company had (2 dash 8 planes) and leased the planes back again from a finance company, they used these funds to pay back pressing debt and line the shareholders empty-ish pockets.
  

* may contain some errors and omissions

 

the list goes on and on and once the bank funding dried up and the shareholders lost interest they couldnt afford to have the maintenance carried out on the planes, today the whole thing ended in a rather unpleasant manner.

 

to run an airline you need to have more than one string to your bow you need to maintain other peoples planes, or buy your planes cheaply and sell them on at a profit, or run a charter operation that gives guarenteed profit flights or run a lease in operation that provides cover for other tech aircraft or do cargo...... euromanx did none of these things or tried poorly to do some of them.

 

All of these problems stem from a piss poor management team at board level littered with consultants and "experts" who had no place running a airline in a market they knew nothing of and care little for.

[manxblue]

Shit ! - paid £140 to fly to Manchester on 14th May and back the next day. Phoned Flybe at 4.25 am today but the line is dead/ceased/disconnected or something !!!.

 

Thankfully, having heard info from a member of staff at Euromanx 2 weeks ago, I also booked a ticket as foot passenger on the ferry to Liverpool on 14th - lucky move.

 

I'll just pop into Mann-Link Travel on Monday and get my money back ! - yeah ! - fat chance ...........

[asitis]

Its not happened in Jersey or Guernsey that have a steady flow of passengers yet obviously nobody makes money flying to the IoM.

 

From what I can make out air passenger volumes are not very different between IOM, Jersey and Guernsey. The IOMSPC takes a bigger share of journeys than the ferries do in the Channel Islands.

 

Air passengers and air travel as % total journeys p.a.

 

IOM 780,000 54%

 

Jersey 782,000 67%

 

Guernsey 869,000 72%

 

 

Sorry correct figures are :

 

Jersey 1.5m passengers twice IOM

Guernsey 884,000 passengers

[asitis]

Agree OMF, it doesn't look good.

 

I do wonder why the airport management seems so closely involved in what must be policy issues; surely the airport's concern is getting pax numbers through it to cover costs, the matter of how this feeds the IOM economy and the regulation of airlines operating out of Ronaldsway is one for the politicos, surely? Just strikes me as a little 'tail wagging the dog'. *

 

As for when pax and employees are informed; not nice, but that is how it is. You cannot announce something until it has happened and you certainly can't announce that you may be thinking of putting the thing into liquidation as that will be a self-fulfilling prophecy and could also result in some serious charges against the directors who are in an extremely exposed position when the company is insolvent - has to be by the rule book, this is not peculiar to the airline industry.

 

It is tough on the employees, and travellers, but like OMF I have more concern about how this resonates off-island and what measure are to be taken by the IOM government to secure our communications links once and for all.

 

*I would have more faith in Ronaldsway's management if they please sacked that useless article in the departure lounge bar.

 

Didn't know the director spent her day in the lounge bar

[triskelion]

In fairness, the taxpayer isn't out of pocket on things like this because the Government budget contains a contingency fund.

 

It isn't really a surprise that Jersey handles more passengers given this list from wikipedia:

 

* Aer Lingus (Cork [begins 20 May], Dublin)

* Aer Arann (Cork)

* Air Southwest (Bristol, Plymouth, Leeds/Bradford [seasonal])

* Aurigny Air Services (Guernsey)

* Blue Islands (Alderney, Bournemouth, Geneva, Guernsey, Isle of Man, Paris-Beauvais, Zurich)

* bmi (London-Heathrow)

* bmibaby (Birmingham, Cardiff, East Midlands, Manchester)

* British Airways (London-Gatwick)

* easyJet (Liverpool, London-Luton)

* Flybe (Aberdeen, Belfast-City, Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Doncaster/Sheffield, Edinburgh, Exeter, Geneva [seasonal], Glasgow-International, Guernsey, Isle of Man [begins 24 May, seasonal], London-Gatwick, London-Southend [seasonal], Manchester, Newcastle, Nice [begins 24 May, seasonal], Norwich, Paris-Charles de Gaulle, Southampton)

* Flyglobespan (Durham Tees Valley)

* Manx2 (Gloucester, Isle of Man (via Gloucester)

* Jet2.com (Leeds/Bradford [begins 24 May])

* Lufthansa (Dusseldorf) [seasonal, begins 28 June; ends 30 August]

* Thomsonfly (Coventry)

* Twin Jet (Cherbourg, Paris-Orly)

* VLM Airlines (London-City [begins 28 June], Manchester)

 

Given some of the locations they fly to, it makes me wonder if the business case for the runway extension might actually be worth re-examining, especially in the case of destinations like Zurich.

 

Stu: Aren't runway surfaces not tarmac, but seperate blocks divided by that rubbery heat expansion stuff?

[asitis]

Jersey runway length 1706m

 

difference number of bums on seats !!

[WTF]

Stu: Aren't runway surfaces not tarmac, but seperate blocks divided by that rubbery heat expansion stuff?

 

 

runway surfaces can be more than one thing, it is usually concrete that is divided by the 'rubbery heat expansion stuff', tarmac is also used, grass ( the good old days ), water ( for planes with floats) we already have a HUGE water runway!! where's the spruce goose? and steel is in there too ( aircraft carriers )

[oldmanxfella]

Jersey runway length 1706m

 

difference number of bums on seats !!

 

Agreed. Here we have a case of overlapping failure.

 

The DTL has consistently failed to deliver any tourist strategy for the IoM. It has millions and millions of pounds each year and come up with nothing of any significance, the result now is that the business sector will start suffering because the overall 'bums on seats' as you say are not enough to allow one dominant airline to make a profit. The Jersey figures are high because of a slightly bigger population but also good tourist traffic on top of the off island and business travel.

 

Do doubt we'll hear another glib statement from the DTL, but it seems to me that failure to get tourists here in any reasonable number is now causing wider issues for the IoM. Losing the LCY link because of all of this is going to hurt the finance sector very badly indeed.

[bluemonday]

Agreed. Here we have a case of overlapping failure.

 

The DTL has consistently failed to deliver any tourist strategy for the IoM. It has millions and millions of pounds each year and come up with nothing of any significance, the result now is that the business sector will start suffering because the overall 'bums on seats' as you say are not enough to allow one dominant airline to make a profit. The Jersey figures are high because of a slightly bigger population but also good tourist traffic on top of the off island and business travel.

 

Do doubt we'll hear another glib statement from the DTL, but it seems to me that failure to get tourists here in any reasonable number is now causing wider issues for the IoM. Losing the LCY link because of all of this is going to hurt the finance sector very badly indeed.

 

Indeed, time for proactive not reactive government. As stated previously in various posts, effective and reliable transport provision is a must for business/tourism. Something that the ruling class seems unable to understand.

[triskelion]

The DTL has consistently failed to deliver any tourist strategy for the IoM. It has millions and millions of pounds each year and come up with nothing of any significance, the result now is that the business sector will start suffering because the overall 'bums on seats' as you say are not enough to allow one dominant airline to make a profit. The Jersey figures are high because of a slightly bigger population but also good tourist traffic on top of the off island and business travel.

 

Do doubt we'll hear another glib statement from the DTL, but it seems to me that failure to get tourists here in any reasonable number is now causing wider issues for the IoM. Losing the LCY link because of all of this is going to hurt the finance sector very badly indeed.

The comments about tourists are very sweeping indeed, especially given that someone has already detailed the numerous poor business decisions made on the part of Euromanx that are much more likely to have had an impact on its failure.

 

Its all very well blaming it all on the DTL, but it is a very easy target. The Island is ultimately a small place and tourism is a very competitive industry. If I wanted to come on holiday to the Island and was resident elsewhere, I would probably want to bring my car over (if I had one) as it is the easiest way by far to travel around the Island (and most other places).

 

Where is the tourist industry association (if there even is one) providing experienced input? Never mind, let's just blame the Government.

[oldmanxfella]

Where is the tourist industry association (if there even is one) providing experienced input? Never mind, let's just blame the Government.

 

That seems to be your stock response to most government criticism, I'm starting to wonder which department you work in

 

I actually think what Allan Bell and treasury have achieved in improving the climate for the finance sector business here has been very positive and beneficial for the Island, however this situation has considerable blow back potential for the finance sector and, as I said in my original post, speaking with people off Island they can't understand how this can happen if our economy is racing forward like they are told its doing so the perception does not seem to match the reality. If we had a bit more ability to bolster passenger numbers through a more bouyant tourist industry then this sort of thing might not happen but really things are dying on their arse and this is further proof of that fact.

 

At the end of the day they had a virtual monopoly and still failed - that is either spectaculary bad management or an endorsement of what many Island residents feel in that 1) a £40m runway extension is a total waste of money because there will never be enough compelling reasons for tourists to come even if capacity increases and 2) that until the island actually gets off its arse and gets its tourist strategy right then other areas of the economy are going to be held back because they rely on good transport links on and off Island being in existence.

[Stu Peters]

I'm sure any profitable routes will be carved up amongst the other operators pretty quickly and London City will probably be a FlyBe or Eastern route within days. Any EMX services that were routinely less than 80% full will probably be consolidated by whhoever takes the routes on.

 

Runways at Ronaldsway cetainly LOOK like tarmac Triskelion, although the projected resurfacing cost makes me wonder if they're interlocking gold bullion bars held together with fairy spit and magic bitmac spooned on top by hand. Whatever, it's certainly more impressive than Galway where I went last week on holiday - half of theirs is downhill!