Three months after it went into administration with the loss of thousands of jobs and airlinks across Europe, including a number serving Jersey, a senior adviser to US investor Cyrus Capital said it was hoped that the business could emerge from the process to restart some operations.
Cyrus Capital was an investor alongside Virgin Atlantic and the Stobart Group in a consortium which took over the carrier last year.
The buyers had planned to rebrand the regional airline, which was originally launched more than 40 years ago as Jersey European Airways, before it was hit by a winter slump due to the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic and a failure to gain government support.
Cyrus Capital adviser Jonathan Peachey, who played a key role in creating the Connect Airways consortium, told The Australian newspaper: ‘It’s definitely not the case that we have abandoned Flybe.
‘I’m hopeful the administration process will enable the business to re-emerge from administration. We invested as part of a consortium with three shareholders. The shareholders committed over £100 million to the business.
‘We invested everything that we had committed to invest and an additional sum in the months prior to the business going into administration as a result of the impact of Covid-19.
‘We are in regular contact with the administrator and we are doing everything we can to ensure that the business can emerge in some form from administration.’
He added: ‘There’s still a demand for regional connectivity in the UK. Cyrus is doing everything it can, along with the other consortium members, to ensure that a business emerges that can re-hire the many thousands of employees who were dependent on it.’
Last week it was revealed that two airlines, easyJet and British Airways, would return to their Jersey routes when border restrictions were lifted.
