Guernsey Press

We are going to increase fleet, says Waves founder

WAVES founder Nick Magliocchetti said the business will aim to build its fleet of aircraft, employ more staff and to continue fundraising in the coming months as flights cease until September.

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Nick Magliocchetti from Waves said the business will aim to build its fleet of aircraft, employ more staff and to continue fundraising in the coming months as flights cease until September. (Picture by Steve Sarre, 21848611)

A total of 140 pre-arranged inter-island flights had to be cancelled as the airline announced on Tuesday that the business would be taking a hiatus.

The news broke days after outgoing Education chief secretary Gus Paterson was announced as the company’s new CEO.

The airline launched in January 2017 with the intention of providing an air taxi service between the Channel Islands but found itself named in a judicial review in January this year.

Instigated by rivals Blue Islands, it resulted in Waves needing to apply for a licence in order to accept single bookings.

‘It was difficult because we just didn’t know what was going to happen,’ Mr Magliocchetti said.

A date of 1 September has been set for the business to begin taking bookings again.

Mr Magliocchetti said the coming months were an optimal time to realign the business, despite previously announced plans to conduct scenic tours for tourists this summer.

‘We’ve had an interesting run over the last year, we had some really good momentum at the start of the year.

‘The whole licensing [incident] had an impact in 2018, the repercussions of this have meant that we know now that we want to focus on the resilience of our fleet and staff.

‘There have been no staff losses but we are looking to employ more, our focus is around customer service,’ he said.

Last year it was announced that the airline would seek to grow their fleet of one – a single-engine Cessna Grand Caravan – with the purchase of two extra aircraft. The purchase did not go ahead and Mr Magliocchetti said in hindsight it was a positive not to have purchased the aircraft when the judicial review got under way.

The review meant Waves were unable to retrieve potential investment pledged via online site Seedrs.

Seedrs is an online investment platform which operates similarly to ‘crowdfunder’ sites whereby individuals can select investment opportunities, the website acts as a mediator between investor and entrepreneur.

Waves’ Seedrs campaign went live in November 2017.

‘We spent around two-and-a-half months in due diligence and preparation for the launch of our campaign. We got to our required target [£495,001] within four days of going live, we achieved more than that [£510,429].

During the Seedrs process, Waves were named as an interested party in the judicial review taken by Blue Islands against the TLA.

‘We had to move from a price per seat model to a chartered model. This fundamentally changed our model at the time.’

On closing the campaign, Mr Magliocchetti said Waves and Seedrs agreed that the business model had changed significantly enough that the campaign should be closed, the investors refunded and that there was a possibility to contact Waves directly to invest should they choose to.

‘I don’t think we’ll be going down the crowdfunding route again. It has been done now.

‘We are always fundraising, we have some incredibly supportive investors, who are continually investing in Waves,’ he said.

Although no Waves staff lost jobs as a result of the break in trading, the former Deputy CEO Barrie Baxter, who was listed on the Seedrs campaign page, is no longer involved in the project and has recently taken the role as President of the Chamber of Commerce.