I decided to wait a few days to let the news of Skybus sink in before posting anything here about it. I have to admit that I was pretty pissed off when I caught wind of the obituary on Friday night. We had just gotten home from a nice dinner out with some friends, talking about our plans the following weekend to fly via Skybus to Chattanooga for a mini-vacation. And now not only has our flight been canceled, but the airline has informed us that we have to go through our credit card company for a refund, which could take awhile.
But anyway, that’s old news. What I’d like to know now is what the net effect that this airline will have had on our city when all is said and done. In the financial report filed by Skybus during their declaration of bankruptcy it was mentioned that The airline listed its liabilities as greater than $50 million to as much as $100 million. It pegged its assets as greater than $100 million to $500 million. This came as a bit of a shock to me as I didn’t think there would be a chance they’d wind up in the black after their assets were liquidated. If that’s the case, then I’m not as mad as I thought I was.
You see, during it’s short 11-month lifespan Skybus spawned hundreds of articles about their service and about their destination, which was always Columbus for those cities they connected us to. There’s a whole plethora of links to news stories and blog postings located here on Columbus Underground, and more news here (some of which may not be directly attributed to Skybus, but it helped on a lot of them).
If you read through a few of these articles, you might notice that whether or not the authors had good or bad things to say about Skybus, they almost always had great things to say about Columbus. And that’s what counts in the big picture.
So yeah, I’m still bummed about not being able to take my two vacations to Chattanooga and Milwaukee this spring, but as far as our city stands, this airline wasn’t a total loss.