KD Avia will suspend operations

[Aksai Oiler]

MOSCOW, March 11 (Itar-Tass) - Russian Kaliningrad airline KD Avia will suspend operations at 6:00 p.m. Moscow time on Wednesday for an indefinite period of time due to ongoing financial difficulties, the company’s press secretary Yelena Penkovaya told Tass,

The airline has no more of its own funds to finance its current operations, Penkovaya said.

The company has already informed Gennady Kurzenkov, head of the Federal Air Transportation Agency, or Rosaviatsiya, about its financial situation the economic news agency Prime-Tass reported.

The company said that it had sought help from the Transportation Ministry, the Russian government, and the country’s largest banks but had not received any real support so far.

During the suspension, the airline’s passengers will be carried by other airlines, Penkovaya also said.

Established in 2002, KD Avia, previously known as Kaliningradavia, is based at Khrabrovo Airport in the city of Kaliningrad.

[davidjohnson6]

Give the recent demise of flyLAL who were based in Vilnius, this does rather indicate a sizeable underserved population in a geographical area.

While Russians resident in the Kalinigrad region do not enjoy completely free movement to/from Lithuania, I believe it is easier for them to enter Lithuania compared to most Russian passport-holders via a Facilitated Travel Document.

I would imagine Gdansk or Riga as a 3rd choice airport for pax in this region is not particularly convenient. Does Kaunas have capacity for a large and rapid increase in pax ?

Apart from SN entering the Vilnius-Brussels market, anyone want to guess who'll come and pick up routes where KD Avia and flyLAL have left off ?

[WHBM]

KD Avia's recent expansion with a 737 fleet was based on them seeing a market for a hub operation between Western Europe and Russia/CIS states (there being very little demand westward from Kaliningrad itself).

While there is demand they could have tapped into, their scheduling was awful for such a market, with some exceptionally long waits at Kaliningrad and some middle-of-the-night arrivals/departures. Their fares initially looked attractive but the service provision did not at all. Sorry, folks, you needed to be better than that.

[gatwicknose]

WHBM...your response seems a little arrogant to me...in this day and age I think everyone has to "try a little harder" ... For your info...KD Avia still flying...I suspect that this move may have been an effort to release funds promised by the Russian goverment to several carriers and as yet only released to Aeroflot. The deadline passed last night and nothing much changed , once again I feel sorry for those involved....we are all not too many steps away from a crisis in this economic climate....

[VOM1T]

Looks like KD avia have now got the go ahead to receive the required state aid and will continue flying, having jumped through the necessary bureaucratic hoops in record time. Good News that this one isn't following FlyLAL !

[gatwicknose]

great news.....I was told confidentially that this was a double bluff in an effort to force the goverment to cough up the assistance that had been promised in November...the same thing apparently happened back then