As we mentioned yesterday, the biggest take-away from the Air Florida story is that a start-up airline company picking 8 focus cities decided Worcester would be one of them. There is no way in hell we would have ever thought that possible a couple years back and we can thank JetBlue for putting us back on the map. Air Florida plans to fly into secondary cities like Allegiant has done and done quite. Instead of flying into Orlando, Tampa and Fort Myers , Allegiant opts for Sanford, St Pete’s and Punta Gorda.
Clearly Air Florida plans the same thing when they list GYY (Gary) not ORD for Chicago and we would bet Pittsburgh would be Arnold Palmer Airport in Latrobe. There are alot of underutilized airports in the country and Allegiant has shown you can make alot money focusing on secondary cities. My point is that Air Florida has a good plan out of the gate unlike a company like Skybus. Remember them they were going to be the RyanAir of the US with all their flights going back to their hub, Columbus, Ohio??
As far as the rest of the article in the Telegram, you need to keep in mind that they are a start-up targeting 2015. We do not see any red flags yet? If a Hertz was to rent trucks to a company that goes out of business means any company that company around that rents trucks from Hertz, you should be afraid of any company that rents trucks from Hertx? There is nothing also wrong with being a public charter, unless of course you run it like a ponzi scheme like Direct Air did. When was the last time an airport was completely up front about negotiations with an airline? The whole point of negotiations between an airline and airport is that nobody is suppose to tell anyone that they are talking!!!
We would recommend:
- A bond much more then 200,000
- Not allow the sale of vouchers or any products that do not have to be escrowed
- At quarterly audited statements
Do we know enough information about them to endorse them? No!! We made this very clear. We are saying, however that:
- We should be excited that people are starting to see the possibilities in Worcester
- We should keep an eye on Air Florida and give them a chance.
If we find out information that is a a red flag, we will be the first ones to tell you like we did with Direct Air. Again on November 10, 2011, we predicted the demise of Direct Air by Ground Hog’s Day (February 2, 2102). Their last flight was March of 2012 followed by Chapter 7 liquidation in April. For now we are excited that a start-up has listed Worcester as one of their eight focus cities and we will continue to watch their development here.
Editors note–comment from reader–thanks Nancy!!!
And another recommendation for people who are booking flights with a new airline: Always use a credit card. When Direct Air went under, we had 4 vouchers paid for, and the credit card company refunded the money within a month, after verification that the airline would not actually be able to provide the service we had paid for. Debit cards, checks, and cash would be difficult to seek reimbursement for, with a company hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt and in bankruptcy.
