A nine year-old New Zealand regional operator has suspended passenger operations and a 2006 German start-up carrier is under regulatory scrutiny after each running into financial difficulties.
New Zealand regional carrier Origin Pacific Airways stopped flying yesterday after failing to get investors to immediately commit to injecting more money into the business.
“Managing director Robert Inglis confirmed to a meeting of airline staff and unions in Nelson that the hoped for capital injection had not been concluded in time to avoid suspending the passenger service…[but] he is planning for the company’s separate and profitable freight operation to continue”, Origin Pacific says in a statement.
“We are planning to try and maintain the Origin Pacific freight business” although it will “only require a fraction of the current staff”, says Inglis.
The statement says the airline currently has 260 staff and is speaking to engineering and pilot unions about arrangements to pay staff entitlements.
Origin Pacific is based in the town of
Inglis and his business partner Nicki Smith own 49% of the airline while
ANZ issued a statement saying it had yet to reach an agreement on whether to let passengers, booked on Origin Pacific, travel on ANZ instead.
The
German regional carrier Dau Air suspended services yesterday after having its air operator’s certificate (AOC) removed by the German CAA (LBA), but is flying again today.
The Dortmund-based Saab 340 operator was grounded on Thursday for financial reasons, but Dau Air CEO Hans-Joerg Dau planned to appeal the decision and this morning the airline was flying again after securing a favourable court judgement.
A LBA spokeswoman confirmed the grounding but declined to discuss the reasons, and this morning said that the ruling was "not the end" of the matter.
Dau Air was not available for comment today but a spokesman yesterday explained: “One of our shareholders was going out of business and selling his stake in the company. We were unable to show enough liquidity to the LBA. Currently our CEO is planning to [appeal] against this to resume operations as soon as possible.”
He declines to identify the shareholder, which owns 33% of the firm. The remainder is held by Dau Air CEO Hans-Joerg Dau.
Dau Air, which has a fleet of three Saab 340s, launched operations in April last year. Its network includes Berlin Tempelhof,
It recorded slightly higher-than-expected first-year losses and, in May, a spokesman said that the airline planned to break even during its second year of operation.
He added that the airline was working to achieve critical size and labelled 2006 as a “consolidation year”, ahead of planned expansion in 2007.
Source: Flight International
