Lizinka

Blog.flylowcostairlines.org informed about the possible end of low cost airline SkyEurope: "Slovak low cost airline SkyEurope announced today that it was granted creditors protection by Bratislava I District Court. All the flights and services should continue without any restrictions. SkyEurope said that no scheduled flight would be cancelled"

This is not the total end however I don´t think they can survive for a long time. What do you think? My friend has already bought two tickets for September...

slomrtwo

I hope they do stick around as they do give much better service than Ryanair. They just can't match Ryanairs prices or the network coverage of StarAlliance/OneWorld/Skyteam carriers. If I'm going to pay the kind of prices SkyEurpe charges when not a promo discount I'm going to expect FF miles in my StarAlliance account.

cundall

Sky Europe are good and i am still shocked they are still going... they were going bust back in Oct last year...

Carolinian

They are one of the better LCC's. I hope they keep going.

MrHalliday

I am about to buy a AMS-VIE ticket with them.
Euro 199 ++ not so great, but for August, ok.

Any reason to look elsewhere?

stefan.aerts

I just did a check on www.skyscanner.net and both KLM and Austrian airlines came in about the same price as each other. I would not risk it and book a real airline and at 199 euro you are paying to much

rejden

Sky Europe have their licence in SLovakia until October,
they announced they found a new investor and it seems the court will give them a new licence until february 2010, so it should be okay to fly with them, at least until end of october (could be like 23.10.2009)

bsb21

Flew with them last summer.

Skyeurope is a good airline and it would be sad to see them go.

However, I do agree that after hitting financial troubles, their fares have become very high.

rejden

actually they didn't make any profit yet (since they started), that is why they are going down wards, but according to my experience they are top low cost airlines in Europe.

sokolov

Sky Europe has found a new source for cash. One company is giving them a loan, another company is going to invest (if the reorganization is completed successfully plus some other conditions). Sky Europe has now started selling tickets for the winter schedule, so they have received their permissions to fly.

rejden

I just red it in a local newspaper, that Sky Europe failed to pay (austrian daily paper reported it's around 4 million euros) to Vienna airport and starting from today Sky Europe will be allowed only for incoming flights and no departures from Vienna airport (VIE). Just to keep you posted that problems with Sky Europe are still coming even when they got new investor. Maybe it will get solve in couple of days, who knows.

sokolov

Well, Sky Europe did pay pat of their debt to the airport of Vienna (according to a news report 85%). But the airport wanted 100% and stopped providing services. So Sky Europe moved it's operation 59km to the east to the airport of Bratislava. Buses are used to ferry passengers between the two airports. This is the arrangement at least until Wednesday.

The 4 mio Euro figure is definitely wrong.

rejden

It's not, I was writing what it said in the news paper so stop this non-sense.
I believe that the 4 million was the debt together for Vienna. According to press Sky Europe managed to pay off around 2/3 of it but both parties (Sky Europe and Vienna Airport) are not confirming anything. So stop saying stuff you came up with out of the blue. Sky Europe is in really .... again and If any of you is going to fly from vienna know this is happening and it won't get solved like tomorrow.

rejden

according to press, no new deals where discussed with the Vienna Airport, but Sky Europe confirmed that the possibility to stay on Bratislava Airport is very real, they may consider to move 1/3 of the scheduled flights back to Vienna. The dates are still unknown. Will keep you posted.

roman.observer

VIENNA, Aug 14 (Reuters) - Vienna airport will stop servicing flights of ailing Slovak budget airline SkyEurope (SKYV.VI) by midnight Friday after SkyEurope failed to pay outstanding debt, operator Flughafen Wien said on Friday.

"Despite long and intensive talks with SkyEurope, the outstanding and due payments were not made by Friday, 3 p.m.," Flughafen Wien said in a statement. "Flughafen Wien therefore ends all services to SkyEurope by Friday, midnight."

"Skyeurope aircraft whose scheduled departure is later than that will not be handled anymore," it said, adding that it would still handle incoming SkyEurope flights.

Flughafen granted SkyEurope a grace period until Friday to pay outstanding invoices after temporarily grounding its flights on Tuesday already. [ID:LB134582] SkyEurope, which obtained creditor protection in Slovakia in June, said last month it won a new investor who was ready to inject as much as 16.5 million euros ($23.6 million) in fresh equity and also got a 5 million euro bridge loan.

The economic slowdown has hit the airline hard and its financial problems have added to the woes as it lost even more passengers because of concerns it may go insolvent. In July, passenger traffic declined by 37 percent year-on-year.

source Reuters.

I think they won't be able to survive, especially during the economic downturn, only strong company will manage to survive