Blackpool Airport impounds aircraft

[Stall-Warner]

I saw a regional news item this evening, whereby the management at Blackpool Airport have impounded a number of small twins, which were on lease to COMED Aviation, at the time ops were stopped a few weeks ago.

Is it not common knowledge amongst the owners of smaller a/c that dry leasing carries this type of risk?

Comments appreciated.

[dada]

yes - the debts are accrued by the operator
of the a/c - in this case the airport is owed money for fees accrued by the particular a/c whilst on some kind of lease to comed. the owners could end up with their a/c being sold in order to recoup the debts
owed to the aiport by these a/c. the owners would however receive the difference.
see also comed reborn thread.
comed is reported to owe the airport upwards of £500,000. how could they let an operator
run up such debts ? strange really, as the
airport director was the finance director!

[Spoonbill]

As Dada rightly points out, the debt is accrued by the operator and carried by the aircraft.
It always amazes me how airport operators let companies run up huge debts, with the very distinct possibility that they will never see a penny of that money.
Gill Airays is a particularly good example, the former management of that company took several of the UKs smaller regional airports to the cleaners. I know of 2 airports who were owed in excess of £200K by Gill, and never got a penny of that back. Their reward for not pushing Gill into liquidation was in one case for the 'new' Gill to carry on operating, and in the other case, for them to pull the one route they had out of that airport and disappear.
Its happened before and will happen again.
No doubt Blackpool will want to recoup their losses, and who can blame them.
Unfortunately when most of your eggs are in one basket, the risk of thenm cracking and going off is highly likely.