diversification into activities was its long-term commitment to start a comprehensive network of regional scheduled services linking secondary airports across Europe, many of which operated on a seasonal basis only. This took up massive resources – financial and managerial. It never became a financial success. Cossey and O'Regan therefore honed in on low-risk activities, specifically few but core activities. Their long-term strategic plan was to penetrate the market for: Short-/medium-haul charter flights. Long-haul charter flights. Scheduled services serving markets where half of the available capacity could be profitably filled with Intasun customers. Air Europe branded airlines in other European countries. A particular financial strength was: Favourable finance leases of new aircraft allowing it to take on more debt (such as further leases) against their fixed residual dollar valuations. Beginning Air Europe became the first British charter airline to use new equipment from the outset and provide food and service that were reviewed to be comparable to established scheduled carriers. Due to the package tour industry's seasonality, Air Europe needed to ensure that it had high capacity through the entire June–September peak season: the airline needed to have finance in place to pay up-front for the deposits to take over the delivery slots of three brand-new Boeing 737-200 Advanced aircraft that had originally been booked by another airline that been forced to cancel its order. Financing these aircraft, which were due to roll off Boeing's production line during May 1979, was its biggest challenge of that year. In the late 1970s major financiers were reluctant to provide start-up capital to newly constituted airlines (dubbed 'paper') unless part of or enjoyed the backing of well-financed organisations. Their reluctance was based on a decade-long high failure rate of UK airline ventures. Therefore, Air Europe's promoters were compelled to approach non-UK institutions, lenders and venture capitalists. Ultimately, C. ITOH and the Marubeni Corporation, two Japanese conglomerates, whose commercial activities included purchasing brand-new aircraft from the United States and leasing them on to non-US airlines as part of Japan's effort to reduce the then huge trade imbalance with the US, were prepared to lend Air Europe the required amount, following complex and lengthy negotiations. The type of aircraft finance Air Europe procured from C. ITOH and Marubeni was known as "Samurai" leasing. It consisted of a combination of full repayment mortgage and partial repayment (hire purchase) finance spread over ten years for each aircraft. Boeing