A jet, the end.
End of the road for ajet
By Alexia Saoulli
CIVIL aviation authorities yesterday issued an order grounding ajet flights from Cyprus, and secured a court injunction freezing assets of the company worth £3 million.
The injunction is to be reviewed by a court today. Meanwhile, authorities rescinded ajet's flight certificate, Communications Minister Haris Thrassou said yesterday.
"Our legislation gives the government the right to prevent flights until the Republic recoups its debt," he said.
Ajet, the successor company to Helios Airways, had already announced a suspension of operations but the government moved in swiftly to ground its fleet when it emerged on Wednesday that the carrier planned to shut earlier than scheduled.
Attorney-general Petros Klerides announced yesterday morning that a Limassol district court had issued a court order banning the departure of an ajet’s aircraft from Larnaca.
The company’s two other planes are currently abroad.
"A court order has also been issued regarding our request to freeze up to £3 million of ajet’s assets, which is a little less than the amount owed to the state according to the Communication Ministry in airport taxes and other dues," Klerides added.
Ajet owes the state more than £2 million in accrued tax, which the government has demanded that the carrier pay immediately.
Thrassou gave the order to ground an ajet plane bound for Birmingham late on Wednesday. The order came almost immediately after ajet informed aviation authorities it would suspend operations.
Witnesses said a maintenance vehicle blocked the aircraft on the tarmac at Larnaca airport while passengers were on board.
The same plane was stopped from flying to Sofia and Warsaw yesterday, resulting in alternative travel arrangements having to be made for hundreds of passengers, many of whom had to wait at Larnaca airport for hours. The Sofia passengers were eventually transferred to a Eurocypria plane, while those travelling for Warsaw were taken to a hotel for the night.
Ajet lawyer Christos Neocleous said yesterday the airline had had no choice but to suspend operations earlier than scheduled because creditors had suddenly sought immediate payment, and not incrementally as initially agreed.
A statement released to the stock exchange by Libra Holidays Group, the publicly listed parent company of ajet, said the same thing.
Neocleous accused the government of treating the airline unfavourably and blamed the authorities for the chaos with delayed flights, accusing it of using the airline's only aircraft as a pawn.
But Klerides and President Tassos Papadopoulos both defended Thrassou's decision to ground the aircraft and said the minister had had every legal right to do so, particularly based on the huge amount of money owed by the company.
"The government had to find a way to secure the money owed to the state," the president said.
Thrassou said the decision to stop the carrier's flights would not affect the ongoing investigation into the last year's Helios air disaster nor any possible civil suits brought against the airline by the victims' families.
He said the carrier had forced his hand in grounding the plane after its announcement that it was terminating all flight operations, leaving him no choice but to act in the best interest of the state. He said the state would be suing the company to get the money back.
Helios and its successor company ajet, which only changed its name earlier this year, have been hammered by a barrage of bad publicity over its safety record since its Boeing 737-300 rammed into a Greek hillside on August 14, 2005, killing all 121 people on board.
The aircraft flew on autopilot for more than two hours, with most people on board unconscious, before crashing from lack of fuel.
A Greek investigator's report released in early October blamed the crash on deficient technical checks, the pilots' failure to pick up on compression warnings regulating oxygen supplies, and shortcomings in the safety culture at Helios.
The carrier has challenged the report, saying it offered no plausible explanation of how its alleged shortcomings could have been linked to the crash.
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