Go Fly
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Go Fly was the registered name of a British airline, usually trading as "Go", now merged into easyJet.
The airline was established by British Airways in November 1997 under the name Operation Blue Sky to compete in the European low-cost market, the company was renamed Go Fly in February 1998. Its first chief executive Barbara Cassani was the BA General Manager in New York who had been credited with turning the airline's flagging fortunes on the transatlantic market around in the early 1990s, and was hand picked by the BA chairman, Bob Ayling, to set up the new venture. The fleet consisted of Boeing 737s which, contrary to popular belief, were not ex-BA aircraft, and its main base was at Stansted Airport in Essex, England.
Go sold itself in its early years with the advertising tagline "The Low Cost Airline From British Airways", something which provoked anger from other low cost carriers, principally easyJet and Ryanair. While those operations had to be built up from scratch, Go had benefited from the deep pockets (and the operations manual) of BA, and the concern was that the British airline would use its financial might to deliberately run Go at a loss so as to bankrupt the low-cost competition. In the end however, Go had done the European low-cost airlines industry a massive favour, as the BA connection brought respectability to a sector of the market which had hitherto been viewed with scepticism from the flying public. Go was often referred to as "the low-cost airline for the middle classes".
After returning a profit within 2 years, the incoming BA chairman Rod Eddington decided that Go had become a liability for BA, since it was cannibalising the airline's core business. In the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, it was clear that BA's priority had to be in restructuring its own full-service operations and Go was soon subject to a management buyout.
The airline was subsequently bought by easyJet in May 2002, and the brand has slowly disappeared from European airports. Flights formerly operated by Go are now part of the easyJet network.
