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Low-price airline SkyEurope goes under
(AFP) – 6 hours ago
VIENNA — Slovak-based low-cost airline SkyEurope, already in bankruptcy protection, threw in the towel and cancelled all its flights, mostly from Bratislava, Prague and Paris.
SkyEurope, listed on the Vienna stock exchange, said in a statement that thousands of passengers were stranded at different European airports.
Earlier Monday the airline had cancelled all afternoon flights from Bratislava and all flights as of Tuesday from Prague.
The Ruzyne Prague airport said Monday it would halt all SkyEurope's flights as of Tuesday after the airline failed to pay its debts, the airport spokeswoman Eva Krejci told AFP.
The Vienna airport halted SkyEurope's flights in mid-August for the same reason.
The airline said in July it had found an investor who would rescue the struggling low-cost carrier that entered bankruptcy protection in June.
The Austrian group FOCUS Equity was supposed to invest 16.5 million euros (23.34 million dollars) in the airline, conditional on a successful restructuring process.
The company, set up in 2001 by mainly Austrian investors, launched ticket sales for the winter season in July after adding two new Boeing 737-300 aircraft to its fleet.
The carrier announced earlier this year that its business had been badly hit by the global economic slump and that it had had to reduce its fleet to just five planes from the 15 Boeing 737s it operated in late 2008.
SkyEurope, with bases in Bratislava, Vienna, Prague and the eastern Slovak city of Kosice, never posted a profit in the six years of its existence.
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