The 40-year-old airline Germania could not find €20 million in funding, ceased operations in the early hours of this morning and filed for insolvency.
The Berlin-based airline was launched as Special Air Transport in the late 1970s operating primarily as a charter carrier.
“Unfortunately we have not been able to successfully conclude our financing efforts to cover a short-term liquidity requirement. As a consequence, we had no choice but to file for bankruptcy,” chief executive Karsten Balke revealed in his statement.
The airline advised in a statement that “regrettably, for passengers who have purchased their ticket directly from Germania, there is no entitlement to replacement transport due to the current legal situation”.
In January, it announced it had managed to find over €15 million in new funding but the funds were apparently not paid and last week it had to admit it was not able to pay staff salaries for January. Germania Group, including the subsidiaries, employs a total of around 1,300 employees.
At the time of its insolvency, Germania operated a fleet of 37 aircrafts carrying more than four million passengers a year. Last year it opened a route between Copenhagen and Priština. The company’s final flight was from Fuerteventura on Monday night and landing in Nürnberg on Tuesday.
In January, it announced it had managed to find over €15 million in new funding but the funds were apparently not paid and last week it had to admit it was not able to pay staff salaries for January. Germania Group, including the subsidiaries, employs a total of around 1,300 employees.
At the end of October 2017 Airberlin filed for insolvency, at the time the second biggest German carrier, 8.000 employees were affected and in autumn last year the charter carrier Small Planet Airlines, like Germania and Airberlin also based in Berlin, filed for insolvency.