Before the suspension of MyAir’s license on July 22, the Italian owners of the carrier played their trump card to escape bankruptcy: a sell bid to Blue Air.
The results found in the financial statements of the Italian-based low-cost airline, but also the discrepancies between the fleets of the two carriers have forced Blue Air to decline the offer.
“We haven’t refused the proposal from the start. We went there to see their account balances and that’s how we became aware of their €29mln loss and weak sales. I think the cash just went down the drain,” Gheorghe Racaru, former head of Blue Air told Wall-Street.
Another factor that led the company turn down the offer was that the fleet of the Italian company was not compliant to Blue Air’s strategy. MyAir fleet included 180-seats Airbus A320-200, McDonnell Douglas MD-82 and Bombardier CRJ-900.
However, this is not the first bankruptcy the low-fare airline is dealing with. In 2004, Volare company, the first low-cost airline to enter Romanian market that operated scheduled services linking Romania to a number of Italian cities went bankrupt. The “healthy” assets were transferred to a newly-established company, MyAir. “Same as in 2004, the Italians can bounce back and lay the groundwork for a new airline company”, said Racaru.
MyAir was carrying around 3,500 passengers to and from Romania weekly.
The Italian airline said it carried around 400,000 passengers to and from Romania last year, similar to 2007 level. In the first half, however, the number of passengers carried fell 34%, to 165,000.
