Skybus VP: we're "best financed" US airline

According to Skybus vice president Dennis Carvill, Ryanair-imitator Skybus is "the best-financed airline in the history of the aviation industry in the United States... We are capitalized to $160 million of initial startup capital, and that has given us the ability to do what we are doing, that is to grow rather quickly." By comparison, jetBlue, which started out a few years ago with quite a lot of cash, had an initial capitalization of $128 million.

Although initial capital is indeed important (and it certainly helped out jetBlue), Skybus' lack of amenities (e.g. no in flight entertainment, no food or drink, no telephone number to call) might not sit well with some passengers, and Skybus will have to focus on keeping its flights prompt in order to make up for the often out-of-the-way airports that they service.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

VP Dennis Carvill of Skybus comment that they are the "best financed" airline in US history is false. Independence air had well over 300 million in start up capital.

Tom said...

I could be wrong here, but since Indy Air was started from ACA, it might be that they already had some cash to start out with... I think that what the Skybus VP means is that they had the most "initial" funds because they started from scratch.