CityJet CEO Update

Transcript

Pat Byrne:Our plans for London City, we're retrenching really back to our core trunk route of Dublin-London City, which is now extremely strong. We're close to 300,000 passengers, so we're continuing that route in our own brand. We are doing some wet lease operations for KLM into London City, and our seasonal routes to Florence, Avignon, and Toulon are now at an end, and we will probably re-engage on those next summer. So outside of that, we have no additional immediate plans for our own branded service out of London City until our Sukhoi SSJ100 is certified for London City operations, which we anticipate will be 2019. Our Sukhois are currently in service with Brussels Airlines on wet lease, on a wet lease programme, flying a really busy network For Brussels Airlines throughout Europe, and particularly we're majoring on Stockholm's downtown airport, Bromma, where we do 4 rotations a day. And we got the aircraft certified for Bromma operations in June, and it has been really successful. So we're flying with fantastic loads in and out of Bromma, and it really has gone very, very well for us. So our aircraft are currently there. We also operate a couple on charter. And from a scheduled service point of view, we will wait until we have the aircraft certified for London City. I have to talk very carefully about these because every time there's talk about them retiring, they tend to really behave themselves and they become even more reliable yet again. So our 20-year-old fleet, it has behaved itself really well, but sadly it is coming to an end. We still have 14 aircraft. We will retire 4 at the end of this year, the end of this calendar year. We will probably retire another 3 next year, so we expect to be out of type by '19, '19/'20, but probably '19. But I must say it's been a sterling aircraft, a fantastic platform, and we owe it nothing. We absolutely owe it nothing. We're always in acquisitive mode, not because we like making acquisitions, but because we actually have a plan, and our plan really is to become the dominant wet-lease provider in Europe. Or CPA, as it would be called in North America. So really what we're doing is developing the European version of the North American model. So if that involves taking on or acquiring an existing regional that might be a subsidiary of a major, if we're getting a wet lease contract with the major, then we make the acquisition. Outside of that, no, we won't. So acquisition happens as part of a grand plan as opposed to a pursuit in its own right.

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