Company
From communication between Mainline and airport officials during the planning stage in 2002, the company intended to operate leased aircraft, older wide-body L1011's refitted with new interiors featuring leather seats and TV's at each seat, a copy of JetBlue Airways. However this proved a daunting project, and in February 2003 (prior to the airline making any "pre-reservation" sales), the plan was axed to chartering the 6-times-weekly flight from a supplemental air carrier's aircraft. Leather seats were abandoned and "TV's at every seat" now meant portable DVD players for each passenger.
Unrelated to the change to chartered aircraft, the "free cocktails" promise was severely restricted and barely mentioned on the company's website.
Confusion and allegations of fraud against the company resulted largely from it not taking any steps towards the 6 month FAA safety certification process required for new airlines, while flights were to being in 3 weeks when the lawsuit was finally filed. Since the company didn't plan to operate its own flights, it did not need FAA safety certification, but did need to properly notify the airports of its change its intentions from starting airline service to only the chartering aircraft and selling seats. It failed to do so.
Before Thompson closed it in June 2003, the website had indicated that a handful of flights during the company's first week of proposed service in July 2003 had actually sold out and reservations could not be made. Thompson says word-of-mouth was bringing in droves of customers when they expected to not receive any or minimal bookings prior to advertising. Thompson stated the company was about to begin an expensive ad campaign focused on radio.
The route the company planned to serve (California to Hawaii) has high traffic volume but at the time few deeply discounted fares from competitors, and Thompson sustains that the market was overpriced at and potentially "a very profitable charter route with the opportunity to sell high-margin vacation packages in the future."
According to IRS tax records, Mainline Airways posted a substantial loss in 2003 including $12,000 of call center expenses and forfeiture a $20,000 deposit on an aircraft charter contract.
Mainline Airways was incorporated as Mainline Airways LLC in Pennsylvania on December 12, 2002. Thompson stated in 2005 that if he starts a similar operation in the future, it will likely be an international route from the eastern U.S.
Read more about this topic: Mainline Airways
Famous quotes containing the word company:
“The Bermudas are said to have been discovered by a Spanish ship of that name which was wrecked on them.... Yet at the very first planting of them with some sixty persons, in 1612, the first governor, the same year, “built and laid the foundation of eight or nine forts.” To be ready, one would say, to entertain the first ship’s company that should be next shipwrecked on to them.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“These studies which stimulate the young, divert the old, are an ornament in prosperity and a refuge and comfort in adversity; they delight us at home, are no impediment in public life, keep us company at night, in our travels, and whenever we retire to the country.”
—Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 B.C.)
“... possibly there is no needful occupation which is wholly unbeautiful. The beauty of work depends upon the way we meet it—whether we arm ourselves each morning to attack it as an enemy that must be vanquished before night comes, or whether we open our eyes with the sunrise to welcome it as an approaching friend who will keep us delightful company all day, and who will make us feel, at evening, that the day was well worth its fatigues.”
—Lucy Larcom (1824–1893)