Therefore, Errol Cossey, Martin O'Regan, the group finance director of Dan-Air parent Davies and Newman, and Alan Snudden, Dan-Air's managing director, tried to convince Fred Newman, Davies and Newman's majority shareholder as well as Dan-Air's long-serving chairman, that operating a brand-new fleet of Boeing 737-200 Advanced series jet aircraft – at the time the very latest, state-of-the-art aircraft – was the only way to secure Dan-Air's long-term future as a major player in the charter airline industry. Their argument to Fred Newman was that operating the latest series 200 Advanced model of the 737 would not only give Dan-Air far better cost figures than any of the existing aircraft types in its fleet but would also allow it to leap-frog Britannia, which initially operated only the basic 200 model of the 737. That model lacked important enhancements, such as a short-field capability enabling operations at airfields whose runways were too short for the basic 737-200 model.