The Pandemic Was No Airline Equalizer. It Exposed Who Could Afford to Fly.

Wendover Productions built its 2021 argument around an attractive proposition: when an industry enters a crisis, established companies and newcomers reach the same crossroads. The smaller competitor can choose a better route and emerge stronger.

Five years later, the three airlines presented as the most promising examples tell a considerably less comfortable story. Flypop never launched. Play Airlines collapsed in September 2025. Breeze Airways survived and expanded, but it entered the market with more than $100 million in capitalization, an exceptionally experienced founder and investors who had backed him before.

The pandemic opened opportunities. It did not make the airline industry equal.

Flypop: A pandemic revival that never took off

The first problem with Flypop is that it was not actually a new pandemic-era startup.

Companies House records show that FLYPOP LTD was incorporated on June 23, 2014. CAPA's airline profile records a crowdfunding campaign in 2016, years before COVID-19. The project was subsequently revived after a period of inactivity, with government-backed financing helping restart its ambitions.

The video describes Flypop's largest funding source as a British government fund supporting innovative businesses affected by COVID-19. That description leaves out an important qualification.

The UK's Future Fund was not a conventional government grant. It provided matched convertible loans, requiring participating companies to secure equivalent private investment. Applicants also needed at least £250,000 in previous third-party equity investment between April 2015 and April 2020.

In other words, a company could not simply arrive with an interesting idea and collect government money. It needed an existing investment history and private investors willing to participate.

The government refused to disclose the precise amount Flypop received, citing commercial sensitivity.

More revealingly, a parliamentary response on March 29, 2022, confirmed that Flypop remained pre-revenue and pre-operational and had not been granted a UK Air Operator Certificate.

By the end of 2023, CAPA recorded the airline as having failed to launch. Companies House subsequently recorded a court winding-up order on June 25, 2026, followed by the appointment of a liquidator on July 29.

The government clarified in 2023 that Future Fund repayment was governed by the three-year convertible-loan agreement, not by whether a company had commenced operations.

There is no evidence here that government funding was improperly awarded. But the distinction matters: Flypop was an established project accessing matched public and private financing, not a new entrepreneur benefiting from an equalized market.

Its proposed UK–India flights never materialized.

Play Airlines: The warning was already in the name

Play was presented as a promising revival of the business model used by Wow Air, the Icelandic low-cost airline that had already collapsed.

Former Wow executives founded Play, intending to connect Europe and North America through Iceland.

The video treated that experience as an advantage. It did not seriously investigate the commercial weaknesses that had contributed to the predecessor's failure.

By October 2024, Play itself was retreating from the strategy.

In an official announcement, the company acknowledged that its North Atlantic connecting operation was generating disappointing yields. Increased capacity in the North American market had damaged its financial performance.

Play consequently reduced transatlantic capacity and shifted its focus toward leisure destinations in Southern Europe. It also expanded aircraft leasing and charter operations for other airlines.

This was not a minor adjustment. It was a retreat from the very connecting model that made Play interesting in the original video.

The financial position was deteriorating:

• In 2024, Play reported operating revenue of approximately $292 million and an EBIT loss of $30.5 million.
• Its operating margin was negative 10.5%.
• Shareholders' equity had fallen to negative $33.1 million.
• By the second quarter of 2025, cash and restricted cash stood at just $11.9 million.
• The airline recorded a $15.3 million net loss for that quarter, while passenger numbers fell 18% year over year.

Play had also announced $20 million in subscription commitments intended to strengthen its finances.

It was not enough.

On September 29, 2025, Play announced that it was ceasing operations. Its board cited performance that had remained weaker than expected, poor ticket sales and deep-rooted financial and operational challenges.

Approximately 400 employees lost their jobs.

The board offered an unusually revealing retrospective admission: the revised business plan should have been implemented earlier.

Play's experience exposes a weakness in the original analysis. A business model can look attractive on a route map and still fail when actual passenger yields, competition and operating costs do not cooperate.

Breeze Airways: The exception had an enormous head start

Breeze is the most important counterexample to any argument that new airline entrepreneurship is impossible.

Its strategy of connecting underserved American cities has produced a substantial operating airline.

By September 2026, Breeze operated more than 300 year-round and seasonal routes serving 91 cities. Approximately 85% of those routes were exclusive to the airline. It had received 55 of its 90 firmly ordered Airbus A220s and retired its Embraer fleet.

The business model has achieved genuine commercial traction.

But the financial and personal circumstances behind that success deserve closer examination.

Breeze was not founded by an inexperienced entrepreneur discovering aviation during COVID-19.

David Neeleman had already built WestJet, JetBlue and Azul. He brought a substantial track record, industry relationships and credibility with investors.

In October 2020, Breeze secured an additional $83 million financing round. Contemporary reporting by Travel Weekly stated that this brought its total capitalization above $100 million.

Peterson Partners, which led the financing alongside Sandlot Partners, had previously invested with Neeleman in JetBlue and Azul.

That is a very different starting position from an ordinary entrepreneur attempting to enter commercial aviation.

And even with that financial backing, Breeze did not achieve its first full quarter of operating profit until the fourth quarter of 2024.

US Department of Transportation Form 41 figures provide an additional perspective. In the second quarter of 2025, Breeze reported an operating profit of $8.7 million and net income of $4.6 million. However, its preceding 12 months still showed an operating loss of $37.6 million and a net loss of $77.5 million.

These are carrier-reported figures, and the Department of Transportation explicitly cautions that they have not been independently verified against public financial statements.

In September 2026, Aviation Week reported that Neeleman had described Breeze as profitable in the first quarter of that year. The airline remains privately held and does not publish detailed financial results.

Breeze deserves recognition as a successful entrant. But its success demonstrates something narrower than the video's argument.

A highly experienced airline founder, backed by more than $100 million and established investment relationships, can build a new airline around underserved routes.

That is evidence of opportunity. It is not evidence of an equal playing field.

The missing calculation: Who actually benefited from the crisis?

The video makes a reasonable observation about aircraft availability.

Established airlines retired older aircraft, manufacturers faced enormous delivery backlogs, and leasing companies had more opportunities to place aircraft with new operators.

But the video never quantifies how much cheaper aircraft actually became for these startups.

It provides no comparative lease-rate data, no breakdown of the actual financial savings achieved by the three airlines, and no evidence establishing how much of their eventual performance resulted from pandemic-era aircraft availability.

It also fails to distinguish sufficiently between three very different commercial propositions:

• Flypop needed to establish long-haul UK–India operations.
• Play needed to make an Icelandic transatlantic connecting network commercially viable.
• Breeze needed to establish domestic nonstop routes in underserved American markets.

Their outcomes cannot establish that COVID-19 itself caused their successes or failures.

Nor does the survival of Breeze establish that the industry's barriers to entry disappeared.

The more important question is whether the crisis changed the economics of entry enough to compensate for the enormous advantages held by established operators and well-connected founders.

The available evidence does not establish that it did.

The final verdict: An opening is not an equalizer

I will not argue that Wendover was wrong to identify an opportunity in 2021. The video explicitly acknowledged that the following years would determine whether new airline entrepreneurship remained possible.

Those years have supplied a revealing answer.

Flypop never launched. Play's celebrated transatlantic model proved commercially inadequate and the airline eventually closed. Breeze succeeded, but with exceptional founder experience, substantial financing and established investor relationships.

The central distinction is between finding an opportunity and possessing the resources to exploit it.

A crisis can release aircraft, create underserved routes and weaken established competitors. It cannot automatically provide a newcomer with the money, regulatory infrastructure, operating experience or financial runway needed to survive years of losses.

That is the uncomfortable omission in the equalizer metaphor.

The pandemic did not remove the airline industry's barriers. It temporarily changed the opportunities available to those capable of financing their way through them.

Breeze proves that a new airline can succeed. Flypop and Play demonstrate how easily the opportunity can disappear.

The skies opened a little. The price of entering them remained enormous.

References

1. How to Start an Airline — Wendover Productions, original video. The primary source for the crisis-equalizer argument and the three startup examples.

2. FLYPOP LTD — Company Overview and Filing History — Companies House, UK. Records incorporation, the June 2026 winding-up order and July 2026 liquidator appointment.

3. flypop Airline Profile — CAPA, Centre for Aviation. Records the proposed routes, earlier crowdfunding and failure to launch by December 2023.

4. Future Fund FAQs — British Business Bank. Establishes the matched convertible-loan structure and previous private-equity eligibility requirement.

5. Written Answer HL6989 — UK Parliament, March 29, 2022. Confirms Flypop was pre-operational, had no UK AOC and that its individual loan amount was withheld.

6. Written Answer HL7475 — UK Parliament, May 17, 2023. Clarifies that Future Fund loan repayment was governed by its convertible-loan agreement rather than operational launch.

7. PLAY Airlines Business Model Adjusted and Earnings Below Expectations — Fly Play hf., October 16, 2024. The company's own explanation of disappointing transatlantic yields and its strategic retreat.

8. Fly Play hf.: Financial Results 2024 — Nasdaq, February 17, 2025. Provides Play's revenue, operating losses and negative shareholder equity.

9. Fly Play hf.: Financial Results Q2 2025 — Nasdaq, August 7, 2025. Documents the airline's cash position, quarterly losses and declining passenger numbers.

10. Fly Play hf. Ceases Operations — Fly Play hf., September 29, 2025. The board's official explanation for shutting down and the consequences for employees and passengers.

11. Breeze Airways Raises $83 Million in New Financing — Travel Weekly, October 5, 2020. Establishes Breeze's more than $100 million pre-launch capitalization and its repeat-investor relationships.

12. Breeze Announces First Full Quarter of Operating Profit — Breeze Airways, January 23, 2025. Provides the company's reported 2024 revenue, first quarterly operating profit and route expansion.

13. Airline Quarterly Financial Review: Second Quarter 2025 — US Department of Transportation, October 9, 2025. Provides carrier-reported Form 41 operating and net income figures for Breeze, including its quarterly and trailing 12-month results.

14. Breeze Airways Operating All-A220 Fleet With E190s Now Retired — Aviation Week, September 8, 2026. Documents Breeze's current network, fleet expansion and management's profitability statement.