Posted on 04/04/2008 8:09:08 PM PDT by buccaneer81
Good riddence!
I bet Airbus is pissed. Skybus had placed orders for 65 aircraft. Of course, if Airbus really expected them to be in business long enough to take delivery, they must have been a bit loco.
Why good riddance?
welcome news
Skybus has approximately 450 employees. Of those, 350 are based in Columbus, with the remainder in Greensboro.
Didn't they have employees in those other 14 cities they flew to?
They may have contracted out their ground handling at the other cities. Just a guess; it's occasionally done that way.
It was an interesting model but they must have had trouble making money and that is the ruler that all business should and must be measured. I do think there is a place and demand for discount carriers but this is not yet the time for them.
I fly United and for me the service has only gotten better the more I have flown with them. The clerks at the counter and at flight check-in have been especially good at going the extra mile even holding a plane for me while I was going through security and checking me in when I was running behind and they knew I was due to arrive. I fly so much that the extra service makes life much easier.
Hmmm, this sucks. We were schedule to fly from NC to NH in June for a family affair.
They dumped a buddy and I off a canceled flight in Feb from NC to Springfield, MAss.
Fuel prices killed them. They were actually the number one carrier here in Columbus for the month of February. Southwest is the usual leader.
I used to live in Springfield. Isn't Chicopee a beautiful place? LOL!
My entire family (5) flew round-trip to Columbus from Bellingham (N.Seattle) last year. For less than $400.
We’re sad to see them fold.
Try Southwest if it's available to you and fly to TF Green Airport in Providence,RI. A lot better than Logan.
and now Skybus...
Who's next?
What a pitiful situation.
Everything in Chicopee looked pretty nice covered in snow. We ended up driving 13 hours.
We were shooting in the S&W Winter Nationals. So we saw the hotel and the indoor ranges at S&W.
It ticked us off that all the new england flights on other airlines had cancelled, but Skybus showed ‘on-time’.
So we drove all the way from Raleigh to Greensboro to learn 20 minutes before departure that we weren’t flying. That also put us 2 hours out of our way on our eventual road trip.
Skybus gave up on Bellingham a few months ago, mostly due to fuel costs. And your family's experience was unfortunately the exception rather than the rule.
This is going to be another one of those periods where most of the startup airlines go under, allowing some of the majors get to raise fares and keep providing bad service for a while longer. Even an airline as relatively healthy as Southwest is cutting back some flights. Fuel prices are the major problem - expect fares to go way up across the board as the competition drops out.
I checked into their flights, and the problem I found was connections were spotty.
Yikes! But your experience is probably 35% of what killed Skybus. Fuel prices were the other 65%. Of course, the pilots were going to vote next week to unionize, so it would have been over either way.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.