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News: Germania declares bankruptcy

Low-cost and holiday airline Germania filed for bankruptcy earlier today. All of its flight have been cancelled with immediate effect. The airline had been seeking additional funding to tide it through the lean winter months for some time, but last minute talks failed to reach a conclusion. The firm takes with it maintenance provider Germania Technik Brandenburg, but Swiss airline Germania Flug AG and Bulgarian Eagle (both part of the group) are not affected. Rival Eurowings has offered 50% discounts to assist stranded passengers.

Managing director Karsten Balke said: "We ultimately failed to successfully complete our financing efforts to meet short-term liquidity needs."

Germania has filed for bankruptcy and all of its flights are grounded. (Kambui)

In a statement, Germania said that its short-term liquidity needs emerged mainly due to unforeseeable events such as massive increases in fuel prices last summer and the simultaneous weakening of the euro against the US dollar, considerable delays in phasing aircraft into the fleet and an unusually high number of maintenance events that the airline’s aircraft required were major burdens for the company.

Germania was an independent German airline with a history that dating back more than 30 years. It was founded in 1978 as Special Air Transport with Sud Aviation SE-210 Caravelles, and later updated with Boeing 727s and Boeing 737s before moving to a predominantly Airbus-based fleet. Its inventory is currently made up of Airbus A319s, A321s and Boeing 737-700s. It also had A320neo aircraft on order.

 

Editorial opinion: Yet another budget carrier goes to the wall, following last year's collapse of Primera and the failure of Air Berlin in 2017. Others including Flybe and Norwegian are struggling and have had to raise additional funding, while even Ryanair and Wizz Air have revealed falling profits. The Aviation Oracle highlighted the challenges being faced by low-cost airlines in a February 1 feature: Low costs under pressure?

Text © The Aviation Oracle

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