AiRUnion Alliance was forced yesterday to halt nearly all flights. Following Emelyanovo airport of Krasnoyarsk, Moscow Domodedovo rejected to refuel its jets.
Photo: Andrei Makhonin
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Airports Grounded AiRUnion
AiRUnion was forced yesterday to halt nearly all flights. Following Emelyanovo airport of Krasnoyarsk, Moscow Domodedovo rejected to refuel its jets. As a result, no plane of AiRUnion took off from Moscow Wednesday. For the alliance, its inability to pay to fuel suppliers may result in compete outage. Of interest is that Rostekhnologii that is to become its principal holder this year is in no hurry to settle the debts.
The gravest crisis in AiRUnion’s history broke out yesterday in Krasnoyarsk, where the depot airdrome of its key airlines, KrasAir, is located and where KrasAir has been refused refueling for two days running. According to SAS co-owner Igor Katalevsky, KrasAir paid for the jet fuel for Wednesday and partially for Thursday late yesterday and its jets started to take off after it. But the problems in Krasnoyarsk were only the beginning of ordeal.
Moscow Domodedovo Airport stepped in with its claims also on Wednesday. In the evening, the passengers read on display panel about a day delay in all flights of the alliance (seven flights of Domodedovo Airlines, five flights of KrasAir, a flight of Samara and a flight of Omskavia). AirUnion lost roughly $1 million in revenues yesterday.
“The flights were put off through the fault of airlines,” people in Domodedovo press service said, while AiRUnion made a statement attributing the delay to “arrears to suppliers of fuel and ground services.” According to AiRUnion, the companies’ counteragents are unaware of the exact standing of Rostekhnologii in respect of the debt settlement and have gone to the extremities.
AiRUnion’s biggest private holder Boris Abramovich refused to comment yesterday. Rostekhnologii made another statement about the elaborated plan for alliance’s recovery and debt restructuring. No detailed comments were given.
AiRUnion faces the problems not only in Moscow and Krasnoyarsk. St. Petersburg Pulkovo, Norilsk airport and a few other airports refuse to refuel its jets. In AiRUnion, they have already acknowledged inability to independently settle all debts, which reached $1 billion by Rostekhnologii’s estimate.
What’s more, one of the fuel suppliers, Russian Oil Group, initiated bankruptcy procedures against Domodedovo Airlines, the second airlines of alliance in terms of significance. The expectations of creditors were that Rostekhnologii would settle the debts. But these hopes won’t easily materialize. The sources say that, having familiarized itself with financial standing of the company, Rostekhnologii is in no hurry to decide on its funding.
The alliance might not survive this summer, one of the sources said, adding that “the only chance is that Rostekhnologii uses the administrative resource to raise big loan with a state bank and urgently agree with creditors on the debt restructuring.”
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of Aug. 21, 2008
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