EUROPE’S biggest regional airline, Flybe, is said to be at the point of collapse, with bosses locked in survival talks in a bid to avoid administration that would put 2,000 jobs at risk.
Sky News revealed that less than a year after the airline completed the sale of its assets in a bail-out by a Virgin Atlantic-led consortium, it is again trying to secure additional funds.
Flybe currently operates out of Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Wick and Inverness.
Accountancy firm EY is said to be on standby to deal with any administration of Flybe, which handles over half of Britain’s domestic flights outside London.
The Government is understood to have been briefed on the crisis in the past few days. In October, the airline officially changed its name to Virgin Connect following its £2.8 million sale to a consortium of operators called Connect Airways, which was led by Richard Branson’s Virgin Atlantic.
Connect Airways chief executive, Mark Anderson, said then that the company would be focused on becoming “Europe’s most loved and successful regional airline”.
Flybe, which began in 1979, flew about eight million passengers a year between more than 70 airports across the UK and Europe.
One Flybe source told the news channel that the Department for Transport and Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy has been working to determine whether or not the Government could provide or facilitate any emergency financing.
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