Flybe CEO Update

Transcript

Christine Ourmieres-Widener:Yes, 4 months next week, so it's still, you know, a new job for me, but I must say that after a few months in the job, I had the opportunity to meet stakeholders, customers, employees, investors, shareholders, brokers, so all the stakeholders of the business, And I'm still very impressed by the opportunity and by the quality and the commitment of the employees of Flybe. And I can see the improvement capacity we have for the performance of the airline. So I'm still very excited and up to the challenge. Well, in fact, we already communicated it will be an evolution compared to the announcement was done like last year for the half-year results. So we already talked about moving from a supply-driven to a demand-driven airline. We will reach our peak fleet this summer and then we'll start to hand back aircraft before the end of this year. So we'll have the capacity to work on a set of routes that are really profitable, so to improve the performance of the airline. A great project for us. So we launched the 2 routes, Edinburgh and Aberdeen, end of March. 4 daily for Edinburgh and 3 daily for Aberdeen. It was also the first time for a long time that any airline was operating turboprop into Heathrow. So also a challenge, but a great cooperation with NATS. The forecast was a challenging one, but We start to see the results on both routes and they are very encouraging. So, and the team are really supporting the initiative and partnership with Heathrow, but also with the 2 airports, Edinburgh and Aberdeen, has been, you know, really helping with the performance. So the Avios loyalty scheme, it's our loyalty program. We are working, you know, very closely with the Avios organization. We have a a meeting with them very soon to see how we can even work better together. Avios is a very well-known program in the UK. People know the program very well. It's very easy to use, to earn and burn. So for us also, we want to offer to our customers a convenient and also a loyalty system with a real value. I think that it's a very good question. We are working on the positioning of the brand to just clarify who we are. But let's say if we want to use a number of sentences to describe. We are first, and our soul is in regional business. We are flying from most of the regional airports in the UK. We represent 53% of the domestic market in the UK. So we are flying, you know, from most of the secondary airports in the UK. Our crew are based in the regions, based in the community. So we connect people, we connect businesses. And we fly from point A to point B. We have different competitors depending on the route. Could be the rail operators, but could be also low-cost or legacy airlines. So it's a very diverse landscape for us, but our core business is about connecting the regions. We have an expectation, being from our employees, but also from our shareholders, our board, and the communities to improve the performance of the airline. So that's the main objective. To do that, we've been working on a business plan. We have identified one priority about our digital platform, so we will embark in a digital transformation of the airline. But always at the same time for an airline, we will work on operational excellence. We want to be even better. Even we've been elected the most punctual UK airline. We want to always improve our performance. Wow. And we want also to work better on our network and the evolution of our fleet. So it's quite a number of key strategic initiatives, but we love our airline and we think that we have a fantastic core business and we want to improve our performance by working on these key strategic directions. Well, in a way, we are already a digital airline because 80% of our bookings are going through our web platform, but being a real digital airline is offering to customers, you know, a seamless experience through all points of contact with the airline, being before the booking, during the booking, after the booking, and after also the experience on board. The airlines are investing a lot, I think, because our customers are expecting that, but also beyond that, knowing better your customer and adapting you know, digital platform to the expectation of each customer. So it's about the knowledge of a customer and the personalization of the experience.

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