It is hard to think of a less popular
brand in Romania these days than the private air operator Blue Air. Facing
funding shortages, the airline left thousands of passengers in airports across
Europe.
The government earmarked around EUR 1 mln
from its reserve fund to cover repatriation costs for the Romanian nationals
stranded abroad. The money will be recovered in full from the private operator,
PM Nicolae Ciucă promised. In turn, the transport minister Sorin Grindeanu
urged the travellers to claim compensations from the airline and to look for
other options to return to the country, given that the national operator TAROM
cannot possibly operate all the flights cancelled by Blue Air.
The leader of USR party in opposition, Cătălin
Drulă, himself a former transport minister, accuses Grindeanu of being
aware of the situation with Blue Air, but failing to warn Romanians not to buy
tickets. This is how thousands of people paid for nothing, Drulă said, and
added that lies are being circulated that people will get their money back,
but there is nothing left to take from Blue Air. Blue Air is bankrupt, nobody
will see a refund from them.
So far thousands of
people have asked for help to get back to Romania, and TAROM has organised a number of special
flights, most of them to Greece. Blue Air first decided to suspend all flights
until 12September, because they saw their accounts frozen by the
Environment Fund Agency, to which the company owes over EUR 5 mln. According to
Blue Air itself, this meant cancelling 400 flights, for which over 54,000
passengers had bought tickets. Now, the airline announces it plans to resume
flights only on 10 October, although the authorities have unfrozen its accounts.
The head of the National Consumer
Protection Authority, Horia Constantinescu, said the institution is considering
criminal proceedings against Blue Air, and explained that the company had
already proved it did not care about passengers’ rights.
Two months ago, the Authority fined the
company for having cancelled a large number of flights this year, which
affected tens of thousands of passengers.
Blue Air is the largest Romanian airline in terms of
the number of passengers, with an ultra-low cost business model. During 17 years
of operation, Blue Air serviced over 32 million customers and flew over 340 million
km, reads a news release issued by the air operator. In normal times, this
sentence would sound like a progress report. Today, it feels more like an obituary. (AMP)