Airlines in a Crisis

SAS went out to 200 potential investors and all but a small handfull turned them down. They where eventually grouped into 2 constellations and the one chosen consisted of one airline with no money and pretty much no profit plus a couple of financiers offering loans on bad terms.  One day it could come out that the only ones ponying up actual cash for refinancing SAS is the danish state, that was investing no matter who else was in the buying group. That percentage of the upfront cash should leave the danes feeling very shortchanged when it comes to what they get in percentage of ownership. The problems with the consortium chosen came to the surface pretty much on day 1 when they wanted 3 million to flow the wrong way for SAS.  Anybody that asks for 3 million to consider coffing up 5 billion is as unserious as it gets. The actual buying airline Air France KLM comes up with no cash and the rest of the winning bidders group are just loan givers on generous terms for themselves. O...

In Norway we have several examples on this. Norwegian was/is hq'd at Fornebyu that haven't been an airport for over 20 years. Flyr was hq'd in the overexpensive Oslo city center. And Norse hq'd in Arendal, a town without an airport and even further from Oslo airport than Oslo itself. The train connections from hq to airport might be frequent and only take halve to an hour but its not the same as a 10 minute walk to oversee where your real operations happens. The place where your customers experience your service and most of your critical costs are spent. But also the costs most easily squeezable. Closenes let you reduce the costs before they occur rather than just financially overseeing the bills in accounts after they have happened. That makes a difference when it comes to reducing costs through strict control.  And low costs are the most important for being able to underprise your competitors. Something all the beforementioned airlines tried and tries because they see...

SAS has again proven that they despite all their renegotiated deals with staff and suppliers can't make money with the current debth mountain. Which they probably ain't paying on anyway these days. Question is how then will that change when/if they come out of chapter 11. Another negative month was announced by SAS. Quarter of a billion swedish krona they losst in September after -638 million in August. That is better on approx the same income but still a way to go. And another reduction in liquid cash. Wonder if the winning bidder let SAS management ringfence some of that for ch11 exit bonuses.  From this month income will reduce even more into the winter season. Question is will the outgoings reduce accordingly. Doubtfull since almost all airlines loose money in the winter season, meaning their outgoings don't reduce as much as the downfall in their income. That SAS should do better is beyond even the fantasies of the largest optimists.  What SAS need is some more concent...

Now instead of receiving money from the winning bidders SAS want to pay them 3 million dollars with no guarantee of the money in the winning bid ever materialising.  Isn't this the way all scams starts. You are promised a high sum but there is some administrative costs that have to be paid up front and for some reason they who sit on the millions, or in this case billions, they have promised you can't afford to pay this so you have to. There is certainly a lot of money flowing from SAS to new prioritised creditors like lawyers and consultants these days. What do other creditors feel about that. Hopefully the ch11 judge will stop this particular scam on behest from Apollo who have provided the financing for getting SAS through the process but did not get their bid for the company approved as the winner by the SAS management. The winning bidders have neither signed a binding agreement nor provided a chapter 11 plan. There seeems to be so many exceptions and other limitations from...

He didn't after all manage to save SAS as SAS. Instead he sold out to Air France KLM, possibly in hope of a top position in his home country Holland.  I suggested already before he was hired that SAS needed a Scandinavian to be saved because only a local would understand SAS within the Scandinavian market and just as importantly be comitted to save it as SAS and not just a disappearing part of a bigger concern. But few in Sweden and nobody in Norway saw the value of a dedicated airline competitor in the Scandinavian market. Norway have now this year alone lost 3 of its 4 independent airlines. And the ticket prices have skyrocketed accordingly. A few low cost airlines in and south of Oslo is not going to solve that problem. And with a slow moving and bureaucratic Avinor tht think the solution for lost income is piling even more taxes onto prices, has obviously never learned the business basics about how increasing prices reduces demand and therebye income at a certain stage of the c...

The national head offices structure of SAS has overstayed its usefullnes. SAS norwegian national hq came short again in implementing its rules and stopping another negative article about it's service.being pitifull. Followed by a rash of excuses from after the fact on how this was not how managment had thought it should work or that the meomos to that effet had not been followed. Pathetic. No wonder since the management is housed near an airport that was closed more than 20 years ago. SAS management in Norway is simply placed to far from where its planes are and where its passengers are having daily problems. The managements instructions is either not reaching its staff or they feel free to ignore them since there is not high enough brass visible often enough and/or at the right times. This time it was a family that was unseremoniously and without explanation denied boarding due to overbooking on a plane they saw their luggage being loaded on to. And then underage children where sc...

Latest they accounted as income nearly 500 million nkr worth of unused and expired bonus points they had booked as expenses when customers earned them before the pandemic and before old Norwegian went bust. This comes in addition to the couple of billion nkr of future discounts Boeing gave them as repatriation for earlier problems old Norwegian had with the Boeing planes. New Norwegian also booked this in as income for 2022. In quarter 4 with twice as much income as the year before they managed to only loose about the same as the year before. Is that good, bad, nah or neither. It does point to that they still have problem with growing in a profitable way. Then we come to the the 7,8 billion nkr they say they have in cash. How much of this is unearned payments from future customers. The current CEO Karlsen used to count that as cash when he was just chief of finance in old Norwegian. That went bad in 2020 when they couldn't fly those customers, they all wanted refunds and no new mon...

Of course not. Flyr could have been saved at many stages trough its short life. By getting in top management that new what to concentrate on and what was not important during startup. And who had experience in which functions are needed and how many are needed in each function at each stage of fleet expansion. The main blame lies with the Chairman who got in the wrong people to lead the company. People without any experience from the startup and/or growth of a profitable airline. Even though they are few and far between in Norway. First a spender that let themselves be blended by the role, went for to many fripperies and lured into to rapid sudden expansion and associated expences when there where at that stage not enough passengers to pay for it.  Then replacing that ceo with a person that had been there and had influence on the process the whole time and think that would make a difference. A person that stuck to the plan that hadn't worked so far, just with a few added token savi...

SAS new route announcements seems to be more of the same. More flights from airports in Sweden to the US. More airports around New York. They have added flights from Gothenburg and Jylland which is ok I guess since the hop via Arlanda or Copenhagen is a bit of an iritation. Specially with the troubles due to staffing Arlanda had last summer. They have added JFK in addition to Newark for New York. Big wup regarding destination. And more costs for SAS to a more expensive airport. Unless they would want to become just a longhaul and swedish connections airline they should rather go for more direct connecting within Europe. SAS closed a lot of them during the pandemic and they don't seem to be coming back. There are now no diret SAS Oslo to Dublin flights. That is no direct connection between a Scandinavian capital city and another capital city in Europe.  And there is still no direct flight whatsoever between Dublin and Trondheim. Connecting via Copenhagen or Arlanda will cost you a w...

Norwegian is stacking up with even more planes for the summer months taking on Flyr's 6 737-ExMax that will probably be parked again for next winter.  Last September Norwegian flew 1.9 million passengers with their planes. In January they flew 1.1 million with the same fleet and with a fill of nearly the ssame as in September. That means they winter parked about 40% of their fleet and/or possibly some of the left over capacity was used for flying longer routes. And now they are taking on even more planes that most likely also will be parked when winter again arrives. The litle drip Norwegian get of passengers from the demise of Flyr will be almost unnoticable. Not either helped by that 3/4 of the Flyr fleet was parked anyway. 186 seat planes are to large for high frequency trafic in and around Norway for 80% of the year. And if you have less than 100 planes you should not park more than max 10% of them during low-season.. Lets hope that Norwegian drop some of their older 737-800 wh...

The cleanup after Flyr has brought to the front a number of ways the airline wasted its investors money. A number of staff had fancifull titles whcih point to an overflow of staff that wasn't completely necessary for a small startup company. Lots of VP's under the Chief level. Maybe some of the urge to comit to more planes was due to an overhiring of well titled staff that needed someone to manage which could only be justified by becoming a larger airline.  Where the ex-Norwegian managmenet building the backoffice of the new airline Flyr based on what the much larger airline Norwegian had. An airline that also went under unable to manage its debt or comitments, before being resurrected. A plane needs sa certain amount of pilots and cabinstaff to fly a certain schedule. It is the backoffice saving are to be had. Just as many staff in the back as flying staff seems excessive. Specially when one knows large parts of its ground handling and maintenance were outsourced A lot of effo...

The extra cash burn to prepare for the leases did indeed end Flyr. Instead of doing what they could to make money immediately they put theit hope in a deal that was to bring income in a summer they never reached. The 250 million nkr they got in in new finances last autumn should have been seen as a possible last gasp for the company. Specially since its founder and chairman Braathen said that that was the last 10 million he would bring to the table. That was a signal the company should have known would make future planned founding rounds difficult. Instead of seeing it as a last chance and doing something radically different they continued as before with an internal promotion to CEO that gave none whatsoever rise in share price. A bit of saving where negated by extra spending months before any potential wet lease income would appear in the accounts. A desperate ploy to sell futures to the market that did not appease shareolders for the shareprice to go above the crucial 1 norwegian øre...

Flyr has had extra costs over the winter to prepare for possible wet leases of halve it's fleet of 12 aircrafts. They where desperate for these as they tought the news of them would bring the share price over 1 norwegian øre (0.001 Euro) so they could get some more financing according to a desperate plan. However the deal inclided paying for preparation cost up front. Money Flyr didn't have the finances for. They should relly not have gone for any wet leasing that didn't include at least a 10% payment up front and the rest of the money for each flight paid at least 1 week before it took place. After all the charter companies customers pays it all up front. Another tell tale sign of poor management is that none of the 12 planes actually have any flights scheduled for tomorrow Tuesday 31/1-2023. So we are now awaiting whether they will still be in the skies on Wednesday. A poor sign is also that on the Oslo - Trondheim route, that has a total air-passenger trafic comparable w...

Instead of building a solid own brand they are going for many different quick fixes.  First it was increassing its distribution by adding third parties ticket sellers to their sales channel. The latest is an increased concentration on wet leases to charter companies.  Flyr only have 12 planes and this reduces their ability to get own upfront sales and add additional sales like car hire and accomodation.  It's all about getting the money in early. With own sales you can get the money in months sin advance. With third parties and wet leases you most likely get the payment after the fact. Meaning you will have upfront costs instead of upfront payments and Flyr is not in a financial position to take on that. While wet leases to charter companies can seem like a predictable income stream, they also comes with potential for great risks. There have been a number of charter companies getting into financial trouble in the later years. And quite a few have gone under leaving a lot ...

Not only do the norwegian state demand 400 million in penalties for lack of CO2 quotas handed over for 2020. They are also demanding the handing over of an estimated 300 million worth of CO2 quotas. That is a nkr 700 million demand against only 15 million set off in the accounts of  the airline Norwegian to cover it. With such a large disputed demand against the airline, disputed because the airline itself thought this demand disappeared in the financial reconstruction of the airline 2 years ago, it is strange based on a very thin result they would commit to so much expansion. And even stranger that leasing companies would agree to such an increased risk based on the history of the airline. Not only is it a substantial financial risk but it will also tie up mangement in court and indecision at a time when they should be operationally rebuilding the airline. That is not the time to plan for a rapid 50% expansion which is bound not to only take massive resources. That many new routes...

The CEO of Norwegian announced that they will take on an extra 30 planes closing in on 100 planes in the coming year. In addition to the planes they commited to after the restitution deal with Boeing, which one could have hoped would be used for aircraft replacements rather than even more expansion. The company is taking high risks based on only 1 summer season and 1 autumn season of positive results. 2 seasons where their Scandinavian competitors where in trouble and therefore unable to compete much. SAS with their strikes and Chaper 11 and Flyr running out of cash to such an extent that their winter program runs only 4 out of the 12 planes they are paying leases for.  That is a weak base for saying the market is so good that one should increase ones fleet with 50% in the short term. Growth costs and they'll be trying to find extra markets at a time when both SAS and Flyr could be doing the same.That do not bode well for a continued positive result for Norwegian. Question is can t...

They should have made 8 trips a day and 30 days times 8 186 seat planes at average 80% fill gives 286k passengers or 36k per plane. Even just 4 planes flying 4 legs a day gives 71k passengers. 52k passengers gives about 12 legs per day for the whole fleet. What Flyr have manged is moving barely enough passengeers to justify a 2 shift working day. Remember the longest they are flying should be covered for even a return trip in 1 pilot shift with time to spare. Yield per passenger kilometer for Flyr might be up but now it is for the most parts relatively long distances like Norway to the Med. And that means they missed out on most of the domesting christmas traffic in Norway and also within Scandinavia. We also can calculate that even though yield is up per passenger km, it is only with 15-20%. And that from a state where Flyr was only taking in halve as much as they where using. We also now know that most domestic flights in the entire norwegian domestic markets where sold out the 2 wee...