Flyr collapsed into administration with no chance of a comeback

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 (0.01 nkr or 0.001 usd) price they had hoped to sell future sharecapital enlargements at.

In all getting others linked systems to sell ones seats, and even worse wet leasing to outsource the whole marketing, is a sign of laziness. Their planes were leased. They had outsourced maintenance to Lufthansa Techniks and ground handling to that type of specialists. Where they going to live on training and supplying crews. They would have been better of wet leasing themselves with Flyr as a virtual airline travel agent setup for 1/10'th of the investment due to no need for an AOC. Braathen could have financed that himselves from his pwn pocket without depending on other moneymen. Then get the AOC if profitable and only then go public with shares.

If they needed money quickly and credit card companies weren't handing pre-sales money over until after flown they should have encouraged alternative forms of payment through slight discounts. And as said before if they had early expences demand payment advances and full in advance for wet leases.

Their active route network at the moment that came out after the collapse is also shocking. For 12 planes they had 1 flight scheduled for themonday, noene for tuesday and only 1 for wednesday. In all 26 return flights for the coming week. And for tha they had 60 pilots on the roster. Enough for 6 planes in 2 shifts every day of the week, when they only had work for 20 and 2 planes.

Had a look at their pricing calendar before they collapsed. For the route Oslo-Trondheim, a core route as large and important as Dublin-London, where they only had flights at fridays and sundays. And none of them where sold out of the cheapest level fares. That by the way weren't that cheap at 721 nkr for a 50 minute flight of about 430 km. Oslo-Trondheim is a route over snowy roads that takes longer to travel by car than Dublin-London does by ferry and car. And now loaded with toll boots that make car travel extra expensive. And the 7 daily trains 7 hour on the distance is frequently delayed, track blocked or simply full. The android app FareAutoCalc by MoonC.mobi gives a better opportunity to calculate fares that is both attractive to travellers and profitable for the airline.

So since they had given up on domestic traffic how where they doing on international routes. Instead of being inventive they went for OSlo to traditional norwegians in the sun holiday destinatioins. Routes that was already well served by Norwegian, SAS and more european carriers. Established routes that gave them no discount on fees at norwegian airports. In addition they where so focused on norwegian passengers that they did not discover the hindrances they put on foreigners to use their app. 

Many countries where blocked from receiving the crucial sms'd code needed when registering. That is what happens when one bind to close to a payment system like Vipps that is only availabel to norwegians living in Norway. Or to a bank like DNB that also block their systems from being access from outside their core markets. Nowegians might give you some load but you miss out on the crucial sales from forreignly domiciled traffic that can bring you over the crucial line for profitability. 

Their largest mistake was comiting to 6 extra planes in January 2022, doubling their fleet from 6 to 12 planes. And brand new 737 ExMax;'s at that. With halve the fleet there would have been no need for leasing anything out. No need for training extra crew that then where put out to grace for the winter. Instead they could have. And most important of all their already in the box financing would have lasted them a lot longer due to slower cashburn. Maybe even given them an extra year to find a way to profit. Shiny new planes might give a slightly lower fuelburn but they are more expensive to lease. And under warranty they demand more expensive original parts for maintenance. Not the way to go for a very young startup. 

With less planes eating cash and demanding attention it would have given management more time to concentrate on getting own routes going. Starting routes is an expensive process. Even if these routes already exists and are served by other airlines. Convincing customers of other airlines to fly with you instead could be more expensive than drumming up interest for new routes. And with brand new not trafficked before routes comes often incentives like discounts on airport fees.

The danger is when one ire a management team laied off by a much larger airline is that they will try to grow to the size of that previous airline to fast. To fast to do it profitably that is. Does not help when none of said management team have experience of how to run an airline profitably.

Also what works agains new airlines is the CO2 quota system. Established airlines got a free quota equal to what was their emissions when the CO2 quota system started. So in practice they where only paying for additional emissions from sample expanded traffic. This they could also mitigate by changing to newer planes with less fuelburn by distance. For new airlines all traffic is new and demand paid for CO2 quotas from day 1. This partly explains why the airline Norwegian only pays 3 times as much for CO2 quotas than Flyr that was 1/10 of the size. (Norwegian CO2 outstanding: 450 million nkr, Flyr CO2 quota bill for 2022: 150 million nkr). A massive competitive hindrance for new entrants.

All in all a littany of failures but also circumstances which together brought down an airline more than the now empty excuses of covid and general economy. Even though the drying up over free investment money due to increase in interest rates had an influx in shortening how long it took before it lead down the road to with that leadership enevitable collapse.