Mark Darby (British businessman)
| Robin Mark Darby | |
|---|---|
| Born | 7 July 1959 |
| Residence |
 Guernsey |
| Nationality |
 British |
| Education | King's School, Rochester |
| Alma mater | University of Brighton |
| Occupation | Airline businessman |
Robin Mark Darby (known as Mark Darby) (born 1959) is a British airline executive. He is CEO of Aurigny Air Services, having previously been CEO of Baboo, LIAT and Head of Aviation Consulting at Deloitte.
Darby attended Hurstpierpoint College, King's School, Rochester and the University of Brighton. Between Laker Airways as a planning engineer before moving to fulfil the same position at British Caledonian in 1984. Subsequently, he moved to British Airways in 1988 and a year later became Director Technical Services at Simat, Helliesen & Eichner Inc. (SH&E). In 1996, Darby joined Deloitte as Head of Aviation Consulting. He moved to IBM Global Services as a consultant before founding his own company in July 2002, Aviation Strategy Consultants, where he led the initial phase of the launch of Air Arabia. In 2003, Darby joined Unisys as a managing partner before leaving for Antigua to replace Garry Cullen as chief executive officer (CEO) of the Caribbean inter-island airline LIAT in June 2006.
Upon arrival at LIAT, Darby was given the mandate to transform a "bankrupt and inefficient regional airline that was losing EC$80 million (US$30 million) a year" by the Board and a demand by the shareholder islands to not "come back for more cash", having absorbed US$72.7m between that time and 2001. In January 2007, Darby announced a proposed merger with Sir Allen Stanford's Caribbean Star Airlines, with which LIAT had been engaged in intense competition since 2005. However, in June 2007 the shareholder governments of Barbados, Antigua and St. Vincent gave the go-ahead to the Board of Directors to buy out Caribbean Star instead. LIAT purchased Caribbean Star Airlines on 24 October 2007 and five of Caribbean Star's Bombardier Dash 8-300 aircraft were transferred to LIAT. The airline broke even in 2007 and the following year made a small profit.
...
Wikipedia