As we have seen this week, UK start-up carrier Global Airlines has made its first aircraft purchase, an Airbus A380. Will their proposed model work?
For a carrier who has a website with not much information on it (You can see it by clicking here), its purchasing of the superjumbo is a fascinating thing indeed.
Without further ado, let’s get into it…
Three Airbus A380s on The Way For Global Airlines…
The first unit was purchased from Doric Aviation, based in Germany, although no overall fee has been announced for this.
It is understood that Global Airlines will start operations with three Airbus A380s, with plans of launching services from London Gatwick to New York & Los Angeles.
In terms of financial resiliency, this has already been questioned by skeptics due to the amount of failed start-up carriers in the country that have occurred over the last few years.
The founder of Global Airlines, James Asquith, had this to say to the skeptics:
“Acquiring our aircraft rather than leasing showcases our commitment to financial security and resilience from day one.”
“The purchase of our first aircraft demonstrates that we are well on the way to launching Global.”
“The next step is to overhaul and refit the aircraft to our high specification, providing our customers with the best experience in the sky today.”
Is The Model Going to Work?
Now, even despite providing proof of financial resiliency, can this model actually work, especially given a huge competition there is already in the market?
Already off the bat, if they utilized London Heathrow for these operations, the costs will be significantly higher in terms of operations.
With the carrier going for Gatwick, this would bring some of the costs down, but again the location of Gatwick compared to Heathrow could be a bit of an issue for onward connectivity moving forward.
Regardless of which airport they choose in the UK, it is always going to be met by considerable competition.
You have Aer Lingus UK to New York, Virgin Atlantic & British Airways to Los Angeles, so what is going to make them different from everyone else?
The airline claims to be a “game-changing force within the aviation industry” and will set “out to change the face of consumer aviation around the world, taking us all back to the age of golden travel… with a modern flair”.
So off the bat, it is clear that Global Airlines will try and become more of a legacy carrier as opposed to focusing on a low-cost perspective.
The question here is that despite the rise of costs on the consumer caused by the Cost of Living crisis, are people going to go for this?
And by utilizing the Airbus A380, are they going to, more importantly, fill their seats? Because if they don’t, this is where start-up long-haul carriers begin to suffer.
Overall…
Ultimately, this is going to be an interesting one to see. With plans to launch flights in Spring 2024, we do still have a little while to go before we see whether this comes to fruition or not.
With founder James Asquith already trying to beat skeptics to the post, there does seem to be a high level of confidence that this model will work.
However, utilizing the Airbus A380 does have its benefits, especially with what they intend on doing in terms of the hard product offerings moving forward.
Either way, though, this is going to be an interesting one to watch and will no doubt continue to cause discussion until they get in the air in Spring 2024.
