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Teenage A-level dropout starts his own airline
By Kiran Randhawa, Evening Standard Last updated at 00:00am on 22.03.05A teenager who dropped out of school in the middle of his A-levels has started his own airline.
Martin Halstead's venture is the first since the Thirties to offer flights between the university cities of Oxford and Cambridge.
Using a small inheritance from his grandmother and savings from part-time jobs, he convinced the city airports and an Oxfordbased aircraft operator to back his venture which is being launched on 18 April.
The 18-year-old's company, Alpha 1 Airways, will run two return journeys a day. A one-way trip will cost up to ?49 and will take 20 minutes with a 10-minute check-in time. The 118-mile road journey can take three hours.
Mr Halstead said today: "I meet many people who travel to and from Cambridge and I know what a nightmare journey it is."
His parents Susan, a curator at the British Library, and father Michael, director of a student theatre company in Germany, have been very supportive, he says.
