Rumours abound that British Airways low cost airline Go will be the subject of a management buyout soon, with Go boss Barbara Cassani leading the buyout, which is likely to be announced by Friday.
According to a report in the ‘Sunday Times’, the buyout is being part-financed by 3i, the venture capitalist, and is expected to value Go
at just under £100m (€161m. $143m), the newspaper said.
Ms. Cassani, 40, was appointed to run Go three years ago by BA`s former chief executive, Bob Ayling.
Meanwhile the airline’s web site has been rated the quickest holiday website in two surveys.
One, a study by Qualiope, the pan-European Internet and telecom consulting firm, rated the site as the overall best UK holiday website in terms of uptime and response times in new research reporting on how well British travel portals performed over the Busy Easter period.
The report states that there are big differences in the response times between the top 10 UK travel sites. Easyjet, Buzz, Go, British Airways, Thomas Cook, Lastminute.com, First Choice, Priceline UK, Ebookers and Ryanair, were tested four times an hour, 24 hours a day.
The results show that with the exception of Go, all the other portals showed wide variations in the time taken to complete transactions, sometimes by as much as 100% or more.
To support this further Go`s site speed has also been recognised by Keynote Perspective. Its performance index states that in the latest figures (23-27 April), go-fly.com was the second quickest website online, with an average download time of 0.81 seconds. This is just behind Yahoo with 0.65 seconds and ahead of Eurotunnel, Tesco and Kelkoo.
However, advertisements for the airline have come under criticism by the U.K. Advertising Standards Agency with two complaints against Go from rival easyJet upheld.
easyJet objected to a national press advertisement in which Go promised motor racing fans that its highest fare to Nice for the forthcoming Monaco Grand Prix was more than “40% less than easyJet”.
ASA officials said that from the way the advert was worded, readers were “unlikely” to realise that the saving applied only when comparing both airlines` top prices. Go was also criticised over its boast that it offered return flights from as little as £65 including taxes.
ASA officials said the claim was inaccurate after asking the firm, which operates out of Stansted airport in Essex, to support its offer.
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