Moving forward
As many of you are aware, yesterday we were proud to announce that we’ve returned to normal operating procedures after spending twelve (12) months and one (1) week in bankruptcy. It lasted just over a year and lots of time in court and negotiating with angry creditors, but the rest of the management team and myself couldn’t be happier with the direction this airline is now headed in.
I won’t begin to touch on the hairy details of what we went through during the bankruptcy process (which you can find here), but I will share with you what our plans are for the future.
One week ago, Ryan Parry, former President and CEO of SnapJet Airlines, LLC., approached me and was sorry to announce that his airline was about to go under. He was filing for the most feared chapter of bankruptcy: Chapter 7 bankruptcy–liquidation. He didn’t say why or give any reason as to when he needed to be fully liquidated, but he wanted us to purchase some of his equipment.
SJA, an airline who’s market cap was two times (2x) our own, operated 15-20 aircraft and 100+ flights/day. For an airline that was aiming to be “America’s Vacation Airline,” that’s a pretty decent size. Parry’s problem was that he expanded the airline too fast. This [expansion] is, and always was, my greatest fear since bluWave was established. What we can learn from SJA’s mistake is that if we take the same rapid approach that they took to increase the size of our operation, we could end up with them. I have no doubt. However, as we’ve learned more recently, if we expand too slowly, we’ll miss out on prime opportunities and ultimately be left at the back of the pack. This will not happen again.
Initially, Parry came to our management team and told us that he wanted us to take as much of his equipment off his hands as we possibly could. He said he’d give us the whole airline for a low, cheap price and that he’s incredibly flexible with it. Right off the bat, I said no thanks and that we didn’t have the cash.
The truth of the matter is that we did have the cash. We had the necessary amount of dough in our reserves to make that purchase, but we chose not to because we want these reserves to grow indefinitely such that if we need them, we have them.
Our plan for the rest of the year is to implement the SJA aircraft that we bought into our. Operation and increase capacity. Sometime in May all bluWave employees are going to receive an email. It’s going to be a survey, and it won’t be a requirement to respond to it, but it’s going to have a question on it that will ask where you think our next destination should be. This information will be extremely valuable to us, because we, the management team, want this airline to go in the direction you want it to.
Happy landings, and enjoy your flight!
Connor Levens
President and CEO
bluWave Airlines, Inc.
