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So here comes another airline with a stupid name, this time operating two new routes from Dundee, with predictable help from the Scottish parliament’s route development fund.  Just exactly how much demand is there for flights to Dundee?  Theoretically, the airport offers an excellent marketing proposition, with a superb location on the banks of the River Tay, and one of the shortest airport to city centre transfer times available.  Here lies the problem — is the centre of Dundee top of the destination wish list for passengers who regularly take flights from either Belfast or Birmingham?

Dundee’s current schedule revolves pretty much entirely around Scot Airways’ four daily flights to London City Airport.  As a general rule, there is almost always going to be a far bigger demand for flights to London, than there is to any other city in the British Isles, so how much commercial logic would there be in operating twice daily flights from Birmingham to Dundee, especially when Flywhoosh are operating with ATR42 aircraft, a notably larger piece of kit than the Dornier 328s used by Scot Airways.

No doubt, the business community has been consulted, and surveys have shown that there is demand for more flights from Dundee, but ask anyone if they want better transport links, and they will almost certainly say that they do.  Perhaps Dundee lacks more connections with London because its own airport is too tightly constrained to handle the larger jets that an airline like Ryanair would want to bring in there.  On the other hand, Dundee’s problem might simply be a question of catchment area.  Again, I’m sure that Dundee airport’s marketing department could produce a statistic showing that there are so many hundreds of thousands of people living within a one hour drive, but travellers in Fife are already going to be very well accustomed to using Edinburgh airport for most of their flights, and occasionally defecting to Glasgow International or Prestwick when a good deal from Edinburgh is not available.

There has been previous talk of an overspill facility to handle the extra demand for flights to and from central Scotland, but neither Birmingham nor Belfast are in need of any such extra links. Both are well connected with Edinburgh and Glasgow, courtesy of competition between Flybe and Bmibaby (Birmingham) and Easyjet (Belfast) respectively.

So what are Flywhoosh about?  Is there really a gap in the market for another regional airline using turboprops to connect disparate parts of the British Isles?  There are certainly plenty of routes which are ripe for development, but airlines like Eastern, Flybe, Aer Arran and Air Southwest will have already cherry picked the best links.  Meanwhile, this field is further crowded by airlines like VLM, who are the main player at London city airport, and EuroManx, who are based in the Isle of Man. 

So who are Flywhoosh?  Well, if ever there was a clue in the name, then we have it here — other reports about this start-up airline have commented on its usage of a Polish Air Operator’s Certificate.  In the single European market, country of origin is pretty irrelevant, but it is very interesting to see Aden Murcott come back to the scene so quickly.  Mr Murcott was previously CEO of none other than Flywho, the premium service leisure airline which never got off the ground.  After three summers of false starts, Flywho finally disappeared from the scene late last year, after BBC Watchdog exposed them to selling flights without the correct bonding.

Will Mr Murcott’s extensive sales skills be better applied on this new operation? Clearly, he’s had no trouble convincing the bureaucrats who are there to write subsidy cheques on our behalf, but is this venture really going to be sustainable once the development funds run out?  Perhaps we shouldn’t be focused too much on a name, but “Flywhoosh” is really just “Flywho” + “osh”.  Caveat emptor!

Further information:

• Flywhoosh - Aden Murcott takes on critics
• Flightmapping profile - Flywhoosh
• Dundee flights