Not too surprising, if you ask me.
It seems like they were a bit reckless with finances...
Seriously? $10 fares? I know it's only one per flight, but really...
It was more like 10 per flight, but it's more than that.
1.) Their route structure. They based their ops in CMH and flew to out of the way third-tier airports. They flew from CMH-Bellingham,WA and called it Seattle! That's a good 100 mile trip! I can't imagine that 156 people want to fly from CMH to Bellingham each day to make that flight worthwhile. Most of their destinations had no way to get to their main city counterparts, unless you rented a car from the 1 agency on the field.
Their choices in destinations were curious to say the least. Since they obviously weren't targeting the business traveler, they must have been targeting the leisure traveler. However, their route structure didn't reflect that. They didn't fly to any vacation destination (LAS, MCO, and SAN) until the last half of their existence and even then it was odd places (Punta Gorda?). In addition, all of their flights began and ended in CMH or GSO, further whittling down their potential passenger traffic to those markets only.
Towards the end, they added/dropped more cities than some airlines have in their entire existence.
2.) No customer service. Everything had to be done via their website or kiosk. There was no 1-800 number to call to talk to a live person. In the event of irregular operations, your options were limited and you forced to rebook via their kiosk. Sometimes, this meant waiting a day to get rebooked. Then there was the issue of having to board the plane via ramps. No one wants to board a plane via a ramp in the cold, rainy weather. You can get away with this at airports such as ACK where it's part of the mystique of flying to the island, but not with some of the destinations that Skybus served.
3.) Passenger treatment. Passengers were nickel and dimed from the get-go. You want to check a bag? $5. Want to preboard? Another $10. Then there was the seating. 28" seat pitch. Are you kidding me? No inflight entertainment either. The website actually gloated about their lack of customer service. I mean they actually stated that it was forbidden to bring food onboard. Their answer to the lack of IFE was to "bring a book." Not only is that condescending, but it turns people off to your airline.
I know for a fact that their repeat traffic was nearly non-existent. You can see this borne out in their load factors for Q4 of 2007. It went from the upper 70% to lower 80%, to the low 50% in February. When was the last time you were on an airplane that had an empty seat, let alone over half empty? At least it would have been easy to non-rev on them, if you wanted to end up in Chocopee, MA (actually marketed as Windsor-Locks, CT).
4.) Employee relations. They actually stated that they will pay far below industry average. We all know how much pilots were paid, but FAs were far worse. FAs had to pay for everything from their training to their parking at the airport. Sure the FAs got a cut of on board sales, but when only 5 people are flying from CMH to PSM (again marketed, no joke, as Boston) I don't see how they could afford to go to work.
When I saw their business plan, I could see this was a failed venture from the get-go. I'm glad they have failed. I have no pity for anyone who worked for them. Maybe they will learn their lesson and read a company's business plan before signing on the dotted line. Alas, the free market has worked in this case.
