Flyglobespan

Anyone who took a vacation flight in Scotland between 2003 and 2009 almost inevitably knew the name: Flyglobespan. The airline from Edinburgh offered cheap flights from Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen – and, as a small budget airline, even dared to cross the Atlantic. In December 2009, after less than seven years, it was over. Here you can read how Flyglobespan came about, which Boeing types it flew and how to recognize it on old photos.

Flyglobespan at a glance

Flyglobespan was a Scottish low-cost airline headquartered in Edinburgh. Behind it stood the Globespan Group, which at first had no aircraft of its own: Globespan was a tour operator from Edinburgh that mainly sold flights to Canada – operated by the Canadian airline Air Transat. In 2002, the company tested a connection between Edinburgh and Nice. The trial went well enough to turn it into a budget brand of its own.

The airline was founded on November 7, 2002, and flight operations began in April 2003. The name was the program: “fly” plus Globespan, and with that also the web address through which a large share of tickets was sold. The model combined classic budget airline elements such as direct online sales with leisure and charter flights. How such airlines calculate is explained in the article How low-cost carriers work.

What set Flyglobespan apart from many other British low-cost airlines was long-haul. With Boeing 757s and 767s, the airline flew to Canada and Florida – a bold step for a budget airline of that time.

Codes and callsign

• IATA code Y2: appeared in flight numbers, on tickets and on departure boards.
• ICAO code GSM: appeared in the air traffic control flight plan.
• Callsign GLOBESPAN: this is how the crews identified themselves on the radio.

So the callsign carried the name of the parent company, not that of the brand. If you go through old schedules, boarding passes or radio recordings, Y2 and GLOBESPAN are the most important clues. How the two code systems are structured is explained in the article on IATA and ICAO codes, and more radio callsigns are collected in the post Airline callsigns and their history.

The history in stages

The start with two 737-300s

The first aircraft were two Boeing 737-300s, leased from Channel Express. In April 2003, they flew to five destinations in Spain, France and Italy. In Glasgow, the airline initially flew from the smaller Prestwick Airport but switched to Glasgow Airport after just a few months – a much shorter trip for passengers from the metropolitan area.

Growth in Europe

Soon afterward, more destinations were added, including Prague and the Canary Islands. On the Prague route, Flyglobespan competed directly with the Czech national airline, which gave up its Glasgow–Prague connection in August 2005. By March 2005, the network had grown to 15 European destinations with nine aircraft. In the fiscal year to October 2004, the group reported a profit of 3.7 million pounds on revenue of around 98 million pounds.

Not everything worked: domestic flights from Glasgow and Edinburgh to London Stansted started in May 2005 and were discontinued again in February 2006. The expansion to Aberdeen was more successful, where Flyglobespan began flights to Tenerife in winter 2006.

Long-haul: cheap across the Atlantic

The most exciting chapter of the airline’s history is the flights across the Atlantic. For a small airline from Scotland, it was a big step – and not every route lasted.

Route	Start	Type	Result
Glasgow – Orlando-Sanford	June 2006	Boeing 767	Vacation route to Florida
Manchester – Hamilton (Ontario)	November 2006	Long-haul jet	Canada as a core market
Manchester – Cape Town	November 2006	Long-haul jet	Discontinued after summer 2007
Liverpool – New York JFK	May 2007	Boeing 757-200	Abandoned in October 2007
Knock (Ireland) – New York JFK and Boston	May 2007	Long-haul jet	Part of the Ireland expansion
Hamilton – United Kingdom and Ireland	May 2007	Long-haul jet	Including to Doncaster-Sheffield

Canada fit well with the group’s origins: as a tour operator, Globespan had sold flights there for years. With Hamilton in Ontario, Flyglobespan bet on a smaller airport in the Greater Toronto area instead of the expensive Pearson. Much like the Canadian Zoom Airlines, Flyglobespan tried to offer cheap transatlantic flights with 757s and 767s.

Long-haul also brought trouble, though. For flights over the ocean with twinjets, an airline needs ETOPS approval. The British aviation authority CAA suspended this for Flyglobespan on October 18, 2007, and restored it after a hearing on October 26, 2007. What is behind the ETOPS rules is explained in the article ETOPS. In the same year, the review portal Skytrax withdrew its rating of the airline because of inconsistent service quality.

The fleet: a pure Boeing family

Flyglobespan used only Boeing aircraft. Many aircraft were leased, and some came only on wet lease including crew from other airlines. The most important types at a glance:

Type	Seats (approx.)	Use	Spotter note
Boeing 737-300	142–148	Short and medium-haul	Initial fleet in 2003, partly leased from Air Atlanta Icelandic
Boeing 737-700	148	Short and medium-haul	Shorter 737 Next Generation
Boeing 737-800	189	Medium-haul, vacation destinations	Largest 737 in the fleet
Boeing 757-200	189	Longer routes, Atlantic	Additionally on wet lease from Icelandair in 2007
Boeing 767-300ER	276	Long-haul	Additionally on wet lease from Neos in 2007
Boeing 787-8	–	never delivered	Ordered via a lessor in 2006, canceled after the insolvency

How many aircraft were flying at the end can’t be said precisely: the English-language overview lists six 737-300s, two to five each of the 737-700 and -800, and several 757s and 767s, while the German-language overview names only eight aircraft in December 2009 – two 737-700s, three 737-800s and three 767-300s. What is clear: the fleet was small and changed frequently.

Boeing 737: the backbone

On the vacation routes, it was almost always a Boeing 737. The 737-300 belongs to the Classic generation and can be recognized by its flattened engine nacelles. The 737-700 and the longer 737-800 come from the Next Generation with a new wing and a more modern cockpit. How to tell the generations apart on photos is shown in the article How to tell the Boeing 737 Original, Classic, NG and MAX apart.

757 and 767: the Atlantic fleet

For the longer routes, the airline used the Boeing 757-200 and the Boeing 767-300ER. The slender 757 opened the Liverpool–New York route in 2007, while the wider 767 flew to Florida, among other places. At peak times, aircraft from Icelandair and the Italian Neos helped out. How wet lease works is explained in the article Wet lease; for the difference between the two Boeing types, read How to tell the Boeing 757 and 767 apart.

The dream of the Dreamliner

In 2006, the Globespan Group ordered two Boeing 787-8s via a lessor. For a Scottish budget airline, that was an ambitious signal. The aircraft were never delivered – the order was canceled after the insolvency. The manufacturer of all Flyglobespan types is Boeing.

Bases and destinations

Flyglobespan was a thoroughly Scottish airline. The main bases:

• Glasgow: home base with the widest offering, also the starting point of the Florida flights.
• Edinburgh: headquarters of the group and second major base.
• Aberdeen: from winter 2006, initially with flights to Tenerife.
• Liverpool: at times a base, including for the New York route.

For some long-haul routes, the airline also flew from Manchester Airport and from Knock in the west of Ireland. In Europe, the schedule focused on Spain and the Balearic Islands, Portugal, France, Italy, Greece, Cyprus and the Canary Islands – the classics of British leisure traffic. City destinations such as Prague were added.

One special feature was government charters: on behalf of the British government, Flyglobespan flew from the RAF Brize Norton military airfield to the Falkland Islands and Ascension, and for the Ministry of Defence to bases in the Middle East. After the collapse, Air Italy temporarily took over these flights. How such contracts differ from normal scheduled service is explained in the article Charter flight vs. scheduled flight.

How to recognize Flyglobespan

You won’t run into Flyglobespan in person anymore. On old photos, these features help you:

• Titles: “flyglobespan” on the fuselage – the brand was at the same time the web address.
• Type: a 737 points to European traffic, a 757 or 767 to the Atlantic or longer charters.
• Registration: G- on its own fleet. More on the structure of British registrations in the article on British G- registrations.
• Place and time: Glasgow, Edinburgh or Aberdeen between April 2003 and December 2009.

Because Flyglobespan often leased aircraft, old pictures show aircraft with mixed liveries or foreign registrations. You can recognize such interim states with the article on hybrid and mixed liveries.

The numbers: rise and decline

The British aviation authority CAA published traffic figures every year. They show the steep rise and the slump before the end:

Year	Passengers	Flights	Load factor
2005	approx. 930,000	approx. 7,950	79.2%
2006	approx. 1.49M	approx. 11,600	82.5%
2007	approx. 2.06M	approx. 16,000	82.2%
2008	approx. 1.63M	approx. 12,200	79.6%

2007 was the record year – also thanks to the new Atlantic routes. By 2008, the number of flights had already fallen significantly, and the airline was shrinking.

The collapse in December 2009

The problems began in 2008. In July, Flyglobespan lost the insurance that secured card payments for tickets not yet flown. That intensified the conflict with the payment processor E-Clear, which withheld revenue from credit card payments. Globespan later put the withheld sum at around 35 million pounds; depending on the source, somewhat higher amounts are also cited.

At the end of 2009, the investor Halcyon Investments offered a financing package. But the necessary regulatory approval had not been granted by December 13, 2009. On December 16, 2009, Flyglobespan ceased flight operations, and on December 17 the company went into administration, carried out by PwC. The last flight, number GSM706, arrived in Glasgow from Hurghada in Egypt that evening.

According to widely reported figures, around 4,500 passengers were stranded abroad, and according to the German-language overview, around 800 employees also lost their jobs. In January 2010, a British court also ordered administration for E-Clear UK. The article Major airline collapses in Europe gives an overview of other cases.

What came after

• The aircraft went back to lessors or moved to other operators; the 787 order was canceled.
• The government charters were temporarily taken over by Air Italy.
• The market in Scotland was taken over by other airlines, including Jet2, which today is also strong in leisure traffic in Scotland.
• Contemporaries such as Astraeus, First Choice Airways and Thomas Cook Airlines are history too.

Traces of Flyglobespan today

You can no longer spot the airline itself. But you can still spot its types and home airports:

Common mix-ups

• Equating Flyglobespan and Globespan – Globespan was the parent company and originally a tour operator, Flyglobespan the airline brand.
• Thinking the callsign is FLYGLOBESPAN – on the radio, the airline was simply “GLOBESPAN”.
• Counting wet-lease aircraft as part of its own fleet – the Icelandair 757 and the Neos 767 flew for Flyglobespan only temporarily.
• Noting the ordered 787s as part of the fleet – no Dreamliner ever flew for Flyglobespan.
• Taking Flyglobespan for an English airline – its headquarters and home were in Scotland, even though some routes departed from Manchester and Liverpool.

Conclusion

Flyglobespan was Scotland’s own attempt to combine budget flying and long-haul. A tour operator in Edinburgh became, in just a few years, an airline with 737s, 757s and 767s that connected Glasgow and Edinburgh with the Mediterranean, Canada and Florida. The dispute over withheld card payments and a failed rescue ended the chapter in December 2009. Today the airline lives on mainly in old photos from Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen.