At midnight last night, Cypriot airline, Cobalt Airlines grounded all its pending flights and ceased trading. In a statement released on Wednesday evening, they said, “Cobalt regrets to announce that it will be cancelling all Flights as of 23:50pm on October 17, 2018 due to indefinite suspension of Cobalt’s operations.”
They continued, “As a result, future flights or services provided by Cobalt will be cancelled and will no longer operate.” It’s not known exactly what will happen to their 200 staff, or how many passengers will be affected by the collapse yet, but nine flights were due to arrive, and nine flights were due to depart from Larnaca Airport today alone.
The Cypriot media have suggested that the collapse was due to the airline failing to reach a deal with its main investor, China’s Avic Joy Air.
The low cost carrier was Cyprus’ biggest airline, flying to 23 destinations including Heathrow, Stansted, Gatwick and Manchester, since 2016.
This is the second collapse of a Cypriot airline in the last few years alone. Back in January 2015, Cyprus Airways collapsed following a change in policy from the European Commission, which resulted in the airline going bankrupt.
The latest news is a further blow to the industry who are still reeling from the collapse of Nordic airline, Primera Air, earlier this month. They claimed that “several unforeseen misfortunate events” had affected its financial position, leading up to their demise.
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The official statement released advised passengers to not go to the airport as it was an “indefinite suspension of Cobalt’s operations.” Instead they advised passengers to contact their credit card provider or travel agent.
Transport Minister of Cyprus, Vassiliki Anastassiadou, has advised that the government would assist financially, but stressed that the help would only be for return tickets to get travellers back to their original destination. Telephone numbers to assist stranded passengers are due to announced shortly.
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