Crystal Airways is the luxury airline from Tampa that just can't get off the ground.
For three years, chief executive Timothy Rivers of Lake Wales has promoted Crystal as the business traveler's dream: first-class seats throughout, hot meals and a flight attendant for every dozen passengers. All for a price that will be 40 percent of other carriers' full coach fare.
Rivers told aviation trade journals in 2000 that Crystal raised $160-million from investors but the financing fell apart. The next year, he said a platinum mining company called Apollo Mining committed more than $2-billion in mineral reserves.
Crystal still had no planes, no staff and no federal operating certificate in November when Rivers announced the airline bought Eastern Jet Aerospace, an aircraft simulator and training company in Greenville, S.C., for $5.3-million.
It was simple economics, Rivers said in a press release. "Startup airlines spend millions of dollars annually on flight crew training," he said. Having its own flight and cabin simulation equipment would save $10-million over the next three years.
The airline was wrapping up financing and had staff on retainer "just waiting for the word to start," Rivers told the Greenville News.
They're still waiting. Rivers put out a press release May 22 that the deal for Eastern Aerospace was kaput. The current economic environment forced the company to shift its focus "strictly to the airline startup operations," he said.
Crystal plans to start service in late 2003, the release stated.
