Doing it his way
Eastern Airways operates a niche business model in unserved regional European markets. CEO, Richard Lake, tells John Strickland how the small UK airline has achieved success in the face of stiff competition.
A
t a time when air transport is coming under increasing pressure from government taxation, the biggest loser, certainly in the European context, is short-haul and domestic air travel. For many politicians and environmentalists, these services, often operated by regional airlines, are seen as unnecessary and are subsequently heavily taxed.
Low-cost carriers have also had a major impact by changing the dynamics of higher volume short-haul markets, and we have seen the number of smaller regional airlines shrinking. Many regional airlines have found a solution by tying into agreements with major legacy carriers to provide feed to their mainline hubs, fulfi lling the role of capacity
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provider with no commercial freedom. So is the European regional carrier approaching extinction?
The case of UK-based Eastern Airways shows that there is still potential for an independent regional carrier and that there is equally a clear market need for such a business model.
Eastern Airways, based at Humberside Airport on the UK’s east coast, was founded in 1997. Owner and CEO, Richard Lake, found his own travel plans disrupted when KLM subsidiary KLM UK decided to withdraw from a number of routes linking Aberdeen, the centre of the Scottish oil business, with other domestic cities along the country’s east coast. Coming from outside the airline business, Lake found the only solution to
this problem was “to get on and do the business” himself with a small group of colleagues. This recognition of the need to respond rapidly to a market need, and having an eye for business without the rose-tinted spectacles that are so often seen in airline entrepreneurs, has stood the company in good stead. Today, it fl ies over 600,000 passengers per year, employs 420 people and operates a fl eet of 30 aircraft. Through turbulent times for the airline business, Eastern Airways has been “consistently profi table”, which is a credit to all the team, says Lake He is proud of the fully-fl edged airline that he has built from scratch and the skilled job opportunities that it offers to a local and loyal workforce in Humberside. The airline performs all its own engineering
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