Pandemic started norwegian airline Flyr had a quick change of CEO yesterday as original CEO Tonje Wikstrøm Frislid surprisingly quit and was replaced by another ex-Norwegian Brede Huser previously CFO of Flyr.
Flyr has had a torrid time financially this autumn after commiting to more planes and brand new ones to that, last January. Planes they haven't been able to fill or wetlease out this winter, and no summer profit to boot. They are down to only flying 6 of the 12 planes in the fleet, laying off a number of pilots and other staff.. A failed recapitalisation replaced by a speculative investor lead one, with billions of shares at share price 0.01 nkr, didn't help. Share price has fallen to a fraction of even that leaving litle hope of success for future planned capital repairs. Management mostly consisting of ex-Norwegian leaders laid of during the pandemic and reconstruction of that airline. Speculation is they won't be able to handle a nkr 100 million CO2 tax due to the government in January.
Flyr continues failing in getting loadfactors up to profitable level. They have many international routes but registration for their app has implemented very speceific Norwegian security measures. Try to register with a foreign phone number and for many countries the message with the security number required to registe rnever arrives. In addition their preference is the active in Norway only Vipps payment system.
Even though SAS didn't fly much in July this year Flyr still didn't manage to turn a profit. And that even though their planes was mostly full. That says a lot for pricing policy.
Such a small airline like Flyr shouldn't need to park planes at all during the winter season. One can understand if they had 100 planes but it just have 12. The are just finding their feet but that don't mean they can wait until next summer before going full in. There is Christmas, Valentine, Easter and a whole ot of sports events before then. They need to reate a basis for future winters, and now.
Flyr has abandoned the frequent regularity on the core routes in Norway like Oslo-Trondheim and Oslo-Bergen. These are key routes. Not only for the amount of people travelling them daily, but also because they act as a transport for their planes to be spread to other key bases in a norwegian based network. If they can't compete on Norway's most popular routes due to a small fleet and not frequent enough departures, they should go for more new internatinal routes form Trondheim and Bergen where there are a good catchment area and big multiyear rebates on airport charges available.
Flyr could also need a new strong shareholder with more money to invest than Braathen. Like Ryanair dropped Ryan in Favour of Bondermand just before it hit it big, while Ryan lent back and took the profit from an ever rising share price.
But most of all they should look for more influence from leaders that have european international experience. People with experience from a profitable airline. Instead of filling all its ranks with ex-Norwegian cast off's. The last might have experience in growth, but that was growth without any positive result financially.
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