Fourth time’s the charm
Before we reached the delirious heights which The Reykjavík Grapevine now enjoys, with our marble staircases, third wives, fifth husbands and endless champagne lunches, we were like you: young, poor, beautiful, ready to vanquish the world with Art. Back then we knew the price of milk as well as we now know the rub of Prime Ministers’ shoulders: intimately. Our hearts craved only Beauty, the Sublime and the True.
Today, however, we know that the finest thing in life is money. We are put on earth for industry, shipping, trade. We wish to crumble mountains into slate, harness rivers, and refine aluminium. Pursuit is the highest pleasure. Dear reader, come with us, yield to the seductive force of Commerce, turn away from the false god of Art and turn instead to this article, an article in a series we’ve commissioned to teach you how to build a business empire like ours, a business empire that will echo through eternity.
My underlings have informed me that the budget airline Play has gone bust, leaving thousands of stranded travellers scrambling for last-minute tickets at extortionate prices. This would be funny if it weren’t for the sad fact that investors are unlikely to recoup much in the way of capital from the ill-fated airline. Luckily the price of Icelandair stock went up on the news, taking the sting out of things for well-diversified shareholders.
With this news it’s apparent to even the basest minds that there now exists a gap in the budget airline market. Many Iceland-based budget airlines have come and gone: Iceland Express (2002-2012), Wow Air (2012-2019) and now Play (2021-2025). You just can’t make it work, I hear you say. Think again. It’s been working this whole time. Starting a budget airline in Iceland is not a business as we traditionally know it. It’s more like an elaborate scam or conceptual art piece. Treat it as such, and you will prosper.
Simple steps
I’ll take you through this step by step. At first the ideal budget airline builds hype, raises money from investors and sets about hiring pilots and cabin crew. C-suite, investors, board members, logos, uniforms, partnerships and websites are announced one after the other to great fanfare. Raise as much money as you possibly can. With excitement in the air, the first flight takes off. Everyone applauds. The losses start immediately. At this point, the inexperienced airline operator will panic. Don’t. Drink the champagne, eat the canapés and keep that smile on your face while you expand, expand, expand. Buy more jets. Keep the announcements coming. If you make money for one quarter, use it to borrow more money. For God’s sake, raise more money.
Now here’s the important part: be sure to pay yourself a lavish salary throughout. Issue yourself and your friends extravagant bonuses. Sneak in as many perks as possible. WOW air had legendary parties. Have fun with it, you have access to jets, I’m telling you. But smaller-scale fun is also at hand. We’ve learned from the bankruptcy auction that Play owned two pizza ovens. You could buy and fire them up at the first party. Make some margaritas. Or get creative: sprinkle ham and cheese and radishes for all I care over that magnificent sourdough.
Soft landing
Eventually the whole thing will unravel. If you’ve done things right you’ve kept it going for a half a decade or more. But you knew this would happen eventually. Icelandic labour laws aren’t made for budget carriers. The market is tough as it is. Even the best-run airlines rarely make money. Back in the old days you’d just let the company go bust and that would be that, but Play has taught us an important lesson. They appear to have done a little something called asset stripping. In Icelandic we call this kennitöluflakk; a key skill for Icelandic businessmen to master early.
Before you go bust, transfer as many assets out of the indebted company as you possibly can. Put them into a completely new entity headquartered in Malta. (Important: learn the meaning of the words plausible deniability.) In the final hours, fly the planes out of the country so they can’t be seized by Isavia, a state run company you will, if you’ve done things right, owe a lot of money to. Proceed to go bust. Enjoy your new French vineyard and your Maltese HQ and most of all, don’t forget your friends at the Grapevine who urged you to pursue this fantastic idea in the first place. We’ll come visit!
That should be enough to get you started, then. We’ve covered the most important steps, I trust you’ll figure out the rest. Sally forth, brave reader, and start your budget airline!
Freyr Thorvaldsson drops morsels of business wisdom to his rabid cult following on freyr.substack.com
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