I've thought about starting an airline - an all inclusive fare type deal - also no carry on bags.
Starting an Airline
61–70 of 234 posts
Re: Starting an Airline
#62There's a saying in the airline industry that goes something like this: "What's the fastest way to become a millionaire in the airline industry? Start with a billion dollars." I don't work in the airlines, but I'm a private pilot with lots of friends and family who do work or have worked in the airlines (and in the aviation industry in general). Expenses are high and often unpredictable, and profits are low. A lot of…
Hard, risky. Not impossible though.
https://www.google.com/finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1&chdv=1&...
Re: Starting an Airline
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
You don't need to build an airport, you rent space in existing airports. Renting in the main city airports is very expensive but the ones further out aren't so bad.
Some actually pay the airline to service them, as is the case with some of the Ryanair routes.
Those are the exceptions to the rule. How many planes and routes do you need to even merit consideration at a major airport?
To organically grow, you'd need to find desirable and under served routes between smallish airports, build a loyal following, then maybe you take a risk, borrow money and attempt to move mainstream. Not impossible but it seems like you'd need just tons of money.
Is there much room for value add and innovation? The most obvious area I can think of off the top of my head would be an airline that did all their own security and skipped tsa but I don't know if that's allowed and I think the work would be akin to building your own airports.
Re: Starting an Airline
#64Will there be airplane purchases involved? at least they give a handy price list. http://www.boeing.com/assets/pdf/commercial/startup/pdf/busi... These planes aren't cheap. More than a AWS, digital ocean and a linnode combined!
They don't sell the 757 any more?
Nope. The 757 is really inefficient (RB211 engines are serious overkill). It's unfortunate, because as an aviation enthusiast, I love nothing more than rocketing off the runway on a 757.
Re: Starting an Airline
#65There's a saying in the airline industry that goes something like this: "What's the fastest way to become a millionaire in the airline industry? Start with a billion dollars." I don't work in the airlines, but I'm a private pilot with lots of friends and family who do work or have worked in the airlines (and in the aviation industry in general). Expenses are high and often unpredictable, and profits are low. A lot of…
A classic example I have is, KingFisher Airlines (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingfisher_Airlines). As an outsider the promoter not only lost the airlines but had to part with large chunk of shares from parent UB group as well just to keep it afloat for awhile. Airlines indeed seem like a tough business to enter in.
Re: Starting an Airline
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
Problem with this is that airplane configurations are not easily changed; and accomodating 3 different sizes of seats with the risk of having to sell bigger seats for lower prices.... is not worth taking for most airlines (especially low-cost carriers)
Looks like a market opportunity for quickly-reconfigurable seats.
If you are able to design one that passes all FAA/EASA/CAA/ certifications, I think ALL airplane builders will hail you as their saviour. Not to mention the airlines ;-)
Re: Starting an Airline
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You must build an airport Most definitely not. You do need to rent or buy space (and ideally slots) at a bunch of airports. You can also lease planes.
I mean, it's hard to say that getting terminal real estate is any easier than building an airport would be :-)
> it's hard to say that getting terminal real estate is any easier than building an airport would be :-)
A budget of "tens of millions" would be eaten by a small airport alone (estimates for extending and overhauling Plymouth's airport to link to international traffic and handle up to 115-seaters are 30m GBP)
Re: Starting an Airline
#68Will there be airplane purchases involved? at least they give a handy price list. http://www.boeing.com/assets/pdf/commercial/startup/pdf/busi... These planes aren't cheap. More than a AWS, digital ocean and a linnode combined!
Please note that the pricelist omits a "most popular choice" column/highlight ;-)
edit: typo
Re: Starting an Airline
#69There's a saying in the airline industry that goes something like this: "What's the fastest way to become a millionaire in the airline industry? Start with a billion dollars." I don't work in the airlines, but I'm a private pilot with lots of friends and family who do work or have worked in the airlines (and in the aviation industry in general). Expenses are high and often unpredictable, and profits are low. A lot of…
While there have been a few attempts at competing on other metrics (there were several attempts to start business-class only airlines in the late 90s and early 2000s) There are still business-catered offerings, they just tend to be a division of a parent (legacy) carrier. US Airways and Delta's "shuttle" offerings between major business destinations on the east coast stand out as an example. A couple of the large air…
> It's just that there doesn't seem to be enough demand to sustain an entire airline dedicated to the idea.
Yeah, this is kind of what I meant. The only people capable of doing this are the majors (and then only on a small handful of mostly-Transatlantic routes). Every attempt so far at building a whole airline around the idea of not competing on price has met with failure.
And, as a sidenote, I really want to take that BA JFK-LCY flight sometime, if for no other reason than it uses the old Concorde flight numbers.
Re: Starting an Airline
#70It blows my mind how people start such big businesses. You must build an airport, hire stuff, buy planes, meet many legal requirements and so on, all costing tens of millions of dollars, and on top of that, it must be profitable. This gives some insight, but still it's terryfing. I feel so small.
You don't need to buy planes - leasing is a pretty common option - there are even lease options ("wet leases") that cover the plane, crew, maintenance and insurance: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aircraft_lease#Wet_lease e.g. EasyJet started with 2 wet leased 737-200s: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EasyJet#Origins
The problem with wet leasing is that it doesn't scale. Try operating an airline with 300 planes under wet-lease and still make a profit.