oliver2002

Transferring all the aircraft to the new AOC will take time. Alreeady a dozen former A32S aircraft are in SNN/OSR/MAN/etc to be repainted and getting ready to transfer in batches. Taking over the staff should be easier...

intuition

I noticed reservations in early november just now have turned into "Unconfirmed" status. OTA still shows the trip as noting happened. At what point is the flights actually cancelled and when can one start to claim from OTA or credit card company?

FlyerTalker005

When you receive your e-mail saying that the flight has been cancelled. If you didn't receive it already, call and they will send you one...

geosch

Actually I received an Email from the OTA I booked an early November flight through that the (now useless) AB leg had been cancelled (and indeed it is gone from the booking). The OTA sent out a standard message that no substitute was available and indicated that the only option was a refund (adding that this had to go through AB...). Luckily the ticked was issued in fact by AA, and AA had already readjusted the flights a few days before.
Anyway, looks like AB is slowly deleting their defunct flights from existing reservations.

Scrooge McDuck

German pagers, e.g. DER SPIEGEL, report that easyJet finally has agreed on a deal with AB:

swiss_global

According to Swiss media, there has been an offer for Belair (4T), the Swiss AB subsidiary. Behind the offer was apparently a Swiss entrepreneur/billionaire.

Quoting the Belair CEO Zuber, the administrator Kebekus declined the offer this Friday, "due to restrictions by German insolvency law".

I wonder what these restrictions are? Most insolvency laws are designed to sell as many assets as possible for a price as high as possible. Not selling 4T is definitely an inferior solution than selling it ...

scottishpoet

Unless they get more money selling off the assets separately rather than selling the whole company

Scrooge McDuck

Interesing question. However, one would really need to know the details of this offer, i.e. are there any requirements to be fulfilled by which contradict legal requirements?

Don't forget, there have even been some offers for the whole of AB, but some were conflicting with non-disclosure rules, others had payments only on case that (an unchanged) AB would earn money in the next years, ...

hkskyline

No reply on my flight cancellation compensation, ticket bought after insolvency announcement, so they would need to pay up ...

Often1

If by compensation you mean EC 261/2004, you will never see that. Does not matter when you purchased the ticket.

You will have a valid claim against AB for the compensation, but it is an unsecured claim and it is beyond unlikely that there will be sufficient assets left over when the insolvency is resolved for any such unsecured claims to be paid.

That is distinctly different than your contractual ability to obtain a post-August 15 refund of your ticket. But, that is not compensation.

swiss_global

True, but now it's not being sold at all ...

Today's media (travelinside.ch) is using stronger wording ("Unsorgfältige Administration in Berlin") - literally translated: "Careless (insolvency) administration in Berlin" ...

If that's the case, this confirms indirectly that the insolvency administration was indeed intending to create a LH Group monopoly.

Scrooge McDuck

I stick to my previous post. One really needs to know the details of any (potential) offers before giving any judgement. The plane fact that Belair is liquidated instead of being sold sounds indeed questionable. But were the offers really legally correct and complete in terms of legal requirements? How much money was offered and was there any condition pegged to the payments? ...?

The liquidator would be legally liable if the "strong wording" would be really true. I am quite sure that someone would be willing to challenge that action if there would be the suspicion that this would be true.

geosch

According to media reports, Belair still holds a multi-million Euro claim against AB and Niki in their books. Now if Belair is being liquidated in an orderly fashion, the existing owners (read AB) can simply drop that claim. If Belair had been sold, apparently it would not have been possible to cancel that claim (for whatever reason) and things would have been messy for AB and Niki. Apparently this is the most economic option for AB, even though they need to pay the shutdown cost (vs. selling Belair or filing insolvency in Switzerland).

scottishpoet

EasyJet will be buying the slots at txl

they may be worth more than the airline

maxp0wers

So I learned something new today: Barclay Arrival Plus discontinued its trip cancellation coverage for financial insolvency of a common carrier. Hurray.

I've had the card a year. Trip cancellation was a part of the benefits last year, and things changed earlier this year and before i purchased my Air Berlin flight on June 1, 2017.

So, going a different way...anyone have any success disputing an Air Berlin charge with your cc company instead of filing an insurance claim? I figure i could try to argue that i paid for services that clearly are never going to be given.

Thoughts?

The only option for replacing the flight appears to be a couple much more expensive flights and at far less desirable times. Hoping to at least get back what i paid for the original AB flight if i have to go that route.