Skybus Airlines, the budget carrier based out of Columbus, ceased operations on Apr. 4, 2008, only 10 months after its first flight.

Passengers were given little notice of the airline’s demise, boarding flights for weekend travel on that day — a Friday — only to find themselves stranded at their destinations. The company’s 450 employees immediately lost their jobs and benefits.

The following day at what was then called Port Columbus International Airport (now John Glenn Columbus International Airport), Skybus passengers filed past the airline’s empty ticket counter. Some were angry that they were left with worthless airline tickets, many were shocked that the airline had folded, and others were worried about how they were going to get home.

“It would have been nice for them to have given us some kind of warning, instead of stranding us like this,” said Rebecca Kashary, of Hickory N.C., who was in Columbus visiting friends. The least expensive alternative flight she could find was $175.

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Some airlines offered stranded passengers discounted flights. US Airways said it would accept Skybus tickets for standby travel for $50 per person per non-stop segment plus any applicable taxes and fees.

New York-based JetBlue offered Skybus customers a standby fare of $50 for one-way travel, honored for any JetBlue destination within 100 miles of the original Skybus destination. JetBlue, however, didn't directly serve Columbus or several other former Skybus destinations.

But many stranded Skybus passengers had to pony up to buy tickets on other airlines.

The decision to shut down Skybus was made after a Friday board meeting, but troubles had been brewing. The airline’s chief executive, Bill Diffenderffer, resigned only two weeks previously, and the vice president of operations, Bud Sittig, quit two days earlier.

The airline had several prominent local investors, including Nationwide, Battelle, Huntington and the Wolfe family. Port Columbus had invested millions in terminal improvements tailored to Skybus, and the state of Ohio and city of Columbus provided tax breaks.

Skybus, which promoted fares as cheap as $10, got off to a strong start when it started flying in May 2007. Tens of thousands of additional passengers traveled through its Port Columbus hub.

But the airline hit a rough patch during the winter. With a very short window between flights and a crush of flights all leaving within an hour of each other first thing in the morning, dealing with ice and snow took its toll on on-time performance. Passenger numbers plummeted during the early months of 2008.

“Skybus struggled to overcome the combination of rising jet fuel costs and a slowing economic environment,” said the company’s final CEO, Mike Hodge, in a statement. “These two issues proved to be insurmountable for a new carrier.”

The price of oil was under $65 a barrel when Skybus began flying but had exploded to over $106 a barrel when the airline folded.

Industry experts were not impressed with the airline.

“It was a weak business model to begin with,” said Nawal Taneja, who was head of the aviation department at The Ohio State University at the time. “Their fares and cost structure were out of line… Fuel prices rising is the type of thing you have to factor in when you do your risk analysis. If you didn't do that, then your management was very weak from the start.”