Thousands of passengers have again been left stranded in Europe after the collapse of another budget carrier, Primera Air.
The airline, which operated a handful of aircraft and had ordered Airbus A321neos as part of ambitious expansion plans, announced the decision to halt operations late Monday.
“On behalf of Primera Air team, we would like to thank you for your loyalty. On this sad day we are saying goodbye to all of you,’’ the airline said on its website.
Passengers were told to visit the airline’s website in the next few days or to get in touch with tour operators and travel agents.
The airline said its usual communication channels via email and phone would no longer be offered.
Primera was Icelandic-owned but had operations in Latvia and Denmark and was headquartered in Riga. It mainly ran leisure services for Scandinavian tour operators and had been operating in one form or another for about 14 years.
The budget carrier began making waves when it decided to offer low-cost flights across the Atlantic against carriers such as Norwegian and WOW.
It announced flights from London Stansted and Birmingham in the UK to New York , Boston, Washington and Toronto.
However, it cancelled trans-Atlantic operation from Birmingham in mid-2018, citing delays in the A321neo aircraft deliveries, and said it planned to cancel all operations from October.
Yet as recently as September, it was still touting new service from Madrid to New York, Boston or Toronto.
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Despite its short-lived presence in the UK, Primera attracted a barrage of complaints about its customer service, slow response to complaints and penchant for cancelling flights.
In a statement on its website, the company said it had been “working relentlessly during the last months to secure the long-term financing of the airline”.
“Not being able to reach an agreement with our bank for a bridge financing, we had no other choice than filing for bankruptcy,’’ it said.
The statement also claimed it had been the victim of “several unforeseen misfortunate (sic) events” that affected its financial standing.
It said this included a 2017 incident where a severely corroded plane was removed from operations and resulted in a loss of 10 million euros.
Also under fire were what the statement described as severe delays in the delivery of Airbus A321neo aircraft that ended up being “rocky and incredibly problematic” because of flight cancelations, loss of revenue and prompting the need to lease aircraft.
“Weighting the potential losses due to future delivery delays, and the added exposure to our partners and lessors, and bearing in mind the difficult environment that airlines are facing now due to low prices and high fuel costs, we have decided to cease operations now, where it will have a smaller effect on our clients, due to the timing of the year, rather than increasing the exposure,’’ the company said.
“Without additional financing, we do not see any possibility to continue our operations.”
WOW and Virgin Atlantic have been offering reduced fares to stranded Primera passengers.
Other European airline collapses in recent years have included carrier such as Monarch and airberlin.
