HEAVENS ABOVE: Sir Freddie Laker’s low fares and cheap travel.
In the capricious airline business low cost fliers battle it out. The Hungarian based Wizz Air has collared a chunk of the market and is widely thought to have put in a so-far unsuccessful bid for easyJet.
The Irish Ryanair, run by the ebullient Michael O’Leary, is planning to quit the London stock market, blaming its departure on Brexit. Loss-making Flybe, which collapsed in 2020, will fly again in 2022. It operated out of Exeter, but second-time round will fly from Birmingham airport, which the West Midlands mayor, Andy Street, has hailed as excellent news.
Aviation’s commercial dog-fights and today’s proliferation of low-cost carriers in Britain, Europe and the US, can be traced back to the 1970’s when Sir Freddie Laker, a flamboyant prince of the skies, took on the giants of flying with his no frills Skytrain. While John Swinfield was making ‘King’s Flight’, a one-hour TV film documentary for Britain’s Channel 4, which profiled the combative Lord King of British Airways, he spent time in the Bahamas on Laker’s yacht, talking to Freddie about the powerful BA and other national fliers who Laker said had ganged up on him to bring about the downfall of his business. Laker was the people’s champion, a David pitted against aviation’s Goliaths.
He was once in league with the colourful Harry Goodman, whose rags to riches story saw Goodman open his own airline, Air Europe, and create the International Leisure Group, a major travel company. Laker paved the way for the likes of Virgin, Ryanair, Wizz Air and EasyJet, to challenge the monopoly of flying’s big State carriers.
