sad news Primera going under

[rog747]

Sad news Primera Air going under 2/10/2018

Primera Air filing for insolvency tomorrow (primera Nordic and Scandinavia)

Some a/c currently impounded at STN

Condolences to the staff - many who came from Monarch

[ShamrockF]

It's on their website now:
https://primeraair.com/about-us/corp...es-operations/

[rog747]

Originally Posted by ShamrockF

It's on their website now:
https://primeraair.com/about-us/corp...es-operations/

Yes all the PR and other Press says ceases tomorrow the 2nd -

Edit - both flights ex STN today are cancelled

The a/c at STN have already been impounded

[olster]

Yet they were advertising for pilots yesterday!

[mattyprice4004]

Originally Posted by olster

Yet they were advertising for pilots yesterday!

I've worked for 2 businesses that have gone under - it's not over until the head honchos call time, usually meaning all processes carry on as normal until administration is announced.

At one of them, I'd been recruited the previous week!

[dcoded]

There is something much larger here going on than a "badly corroded airplane" (which is one of 'reasons' the financial math did not work out)
Primera was going to face off the Danish union in court about a highly "interesting" employee setup for their cabin crew.

See the article below, unfortunately in Danish.

https://luftfart.nu/400-000-transpor...imera-ansatte/

[SMT Member]

For those to whom Danish might as well be a throat disease with loose grammatical rules, the gist of the article is as follows:

Primera air had a subsidiary in the Baltics, and had out flagged most of their fleet to the Latvian register. At the same time, crews at the Riga base were placed on self-employment based contracts via an agency, on roughly half the salary and none of the benefits enjoyed by their colleagues on Danish contracts. The flights operating out of CPH were crewed by staff based in Sweden, from where they were taxied/bussed to and from CPH to commence duties. The union argued they were therefore effectively working out of CPH, and should therefore be covered by the Danish CLA. Primera disagreed, and the union booked a date with them in the DK labour court, who would with 99,9% certainty have ruled in favour of the union - there is already plenty of precedence and an EU ruling to back it up.

It's not beyond the realms of possibility, that the prospect of losing that case and subsequently having to more than double the renumeration for a large number of crews, whilst at the same time utterly undermining the out flagging exercise, played a part in the decision to declare bankruptcy. Or, in other words, they were trying to operate on the basis of a dodgy and, ultimately, unsustainable businessplan.

Feel sorry for the crew, suppose the lives of other airlines desperate for crew just got a bit easier. At least for a while.

[oceancrosser]

Originally Posted by rog747

Primera Air filing for insolvency tomorrow (primera Nordic and Scandinavia)

Some a/c currently impounded at STN

Condolences to the staff - many who came from Monarch

No, its sad the Monarch people could’nt find better employment than Primera. Hopefully they will now. However as SMT menber has shown this poor excuse for an airline will not be missed.

[Flightmech]

I guess the beginning of the long haul venture out of STN using an unreliable wet-lease until the 321NEO came on line sowed the early seeds of failure. Hard to recover from reputation wise.

[SMT Member]

Originally Posted by Flightmech

I guess the beginning of the long haul venture out of STN using an unreliable wet-lease until the 321NEO came on line sowed the early seeds of failure. Hard to recover from reputation wise.

They undoubtedly were severely under financed, and incapable of executing their trans-atlantic ambitions successfully. However, out of the ca. 400K pax they carried a year, roughly 280K were out of CPH on IT services on behalf of Bravo tours. They had a good reputation in that market, and I sincerely doubt your average Danish IT tourist would know the foggiest about them flying out of STN, nor be in the least affected by whatever poor publicity that yielded.

[rog747]

Originally Posted by SMT Member

They undoubtedly were severely under financed, and incapable of executing their trans-atlantic ambitions successfully. However, out of the ca. 400K pax they carried a year, roughly 280K were out of CPH on IT services on behalf of Bravo tours. They had a good reputation in that market, and I sincerely doubt your average Danish IT tourist would know the foggiest about them flying out of STN, nor be in the least affected by whatever poor publicity that yielded.

I get the impression that Bravo Tours are part of the group - I wonder if they will go too - or not - I wonder who will fly for them now?

[Trav a la]

Monarch went bust at 4am 2nd October 2017.

What a cruel twist.

[nicolai]

I was next to some Primera crew at Stansted very recently who seemed quite excited and upbeat about their upcoming rosters and variety of destinations. Really bad news for them - I hope they can find new jobs soon. For pilots, well, Titan are really needing more crew (all their work for BA has burnt through hours scarily fast) and maybe they need cabin crew too.

Bravo Tours says they are part of Primera Travel: "Bravo Tours er en del af Primera Travel. Udover Bravo Tours i Danmark har Primera Travel også Sun Tours i Danmark, Solresor i Sverige, Primera Holidays i England, Solia i Norge og Matkavekka i Finland."

So, "Bravo Tours is a part of Primera Travel. As well as Bravo Tours in Denmark, Primera Travel also has Sun Tours in Denmark, Solresor in Sweden, Primera Holidays in England, Solia in Norway and Matkabvekka in Finland". Primera Travel and Primera Holidays UK' websites are offline. The others are still online, the Finnish with a message that says (in google translation) "Airline Primera Air will go bankrupt on October 2, 2018. Tour Operator Travel continues normally. Primera Air's flights are operated unlike the original travel program by the Small Planet airline." I'm not quite sure I get the meaning there, can anyone translate the original "Lentoyhtiö Primera Air hakeutuu konkurssiin 2.10.2018. Matkanjärjestäjä Matkavekan toiminta jatkuu normaalisti. Primera Airin lennot operoidaan alkuperäisestä matkaohjelmasta poiketen Small Planet lentoyhtiöllä." ?

Originally Posted by SMT Member

For those to whom Danish might as well be a throat disease with loose grammatical rules,

Oi, I resemble that comment

[fokker1000]

Very sad to hear this news...
I wish all the crew, and ops staff a speedy route to a another job with a good long term future.
It was a year ago to the day that we had to get off a jet at LGW having thought be were about to push back for a night flight to 'XXX'.
Best of luck to you all.
FK10

[Ventti]

Originally Posted by nicolai

...
The others are still online, the Finnish with a message that says (in google translation) "Airline Primera Air will go bankrupt on October 2, 2018. Tour Operator Travel continues normally. Primera Air's flights are operated unlike the original travel program by the Small Planet airline." I'm not quite sure I get the meaning there, can anyone translate the original "Lentoyhtiö Primera Air hakeutuu konkurssiin 2.10.2018. Matkanjärjestäjä Matkavekan toiminta jatkuu normaalisti. Primera Airin lennot operoidaan alkuperäisestä matkaohjelmasta poiketen Small Planet lentoyhtiöllä." ?

The google translation is actually surprisingly good :-). Agency's travels continue as planned, the only change is that the flights will be operated by Small Planet.

[WHBM]

Yet another case of an operator who had rolled along for quite some years with Mediterranean holiday flights getting attracted to Transatlantic services, starting them, presenting them as extremely cheap, and finding that quite soon, big costs and cheap income, all the cash goes out of the window. Predecessors in this situation go back to Laker and even Court Line, and they are not the only ones.

[msbbarratt]

Originally Posted by WHBM

Yet another case of an operator who had rolled along for quite some years with Mediterranean holiday flights getting attracted to Transatlantic services, starting them, presenting them as extremely cheap, and finding that quite soon, big costs and cheap income, all the cash goes out of the window. Predecessors in this situation go back to Laker and even Court Line, and they are not the only ones.

Misjudging what the business costs are is quite common. Apparently a lot of restaurants fail because the forget that bread, butter, sauces, salt and pepper all cost money too. It's the little things that are too trivial to think about that stack up.

Perhaps there ought to be some kind of legal lower price limit on airline tickets, so as to protect passengers' interests. If you're selling tickets at Laker-esque prices, it seems likely you're going to go bust. If an airline is offering tickets at way too low a cost to be sustainable as a business, why is that business allowed to operate at all? I admit that that might be somewhat contentious in a free market society! For quite a lot of people buying a long haul ticket is a notable investment, and they're always going to buy the cheapest seat available. If they ploughed that much money into, say, a bank savings account and the bank went bust, they'd get their money back.

Also, at what point does an airline business collecting large sums in fares well in advance of the fly date stop being a struggling airline and starts becoming a Ponzi scheme? Of course I'm not saying that that's what's happened here with Primera, there's no evidence of that that I'm aware of. I'm merely pointing out that the way tickets are sold well in advance for large sums makes it very easy for a Ponzi-esque situation to arise, likely unintentionally. What incentive is there for senior management to call a halt at the proper moment when so long as the company is trading they're likely collecting their remuneration packages?

[CaptainProp]

If an airline is offering tickets at way too low a cost to be sustainable as a business, why is that business allowed to operate at all?

Yes, I don't think that's a bad idea. But in a way that system already exists, as the CAA should normally not award a company their AOC unless they have a viable business and enough cash to sustain the operations. Having said that, in my opinion most CAAs are in the pockets of airlines and incompetent, at best. In the country where my license was issued the CAA is known to be more of an institution where government employees who's contracts can't be cancelled are given "jobs" just to have an office to sit in.

CP

[nicolai]

Originally Posted by Ventti

The google translation is actually surprisingly good :-). Agency's travels continue as planned, the only change is that the flights will be operated by Small Planet.

I honestly thought Small Planet went bust sometime earlier this year. It makes much more sense when they're still operating!

[WHBM]

Originally Posted by msbbarratt

For quite a lot of people buying a long haul ticket is a notable investment, and they're always going to buy the cheapest seat available

This one, which regularly appears here, but also in airline boardrooms, is just not true. If it was everyone would have booked Primera and it would be BA and AA who were without revenue. But it's not. Things like corporate travel contracts, more favoured departure points, marketing presence, sophisticated yield management, premium class service, frequency, past experience, connections, and 1,001 other aspects come into play.

Also, at what point does an airline business collecting large sums in fares well in advance of the fly date stop being a struggling airline and starts becoming a Ponzi scheme?

Again, contrary to some belief, the carrier does not get the money until the trip is made. This is because the credit card company is liable to refund the money if they go under, so they (actually a financial intermediary) keep the money until the service is provided. There is no huge balance sheet amount of prepaid fares in airline accounts. This credit card approach started when such were only a minor proportion of fare payments, now it's pretty universal.

But in a way that system already exists, as the CAA should normally not award a company their AOC unless they have a viable business and enough cash to sustain the operations.

That's as maybe, but operators like this across multiple CAAs are challenging to keep up with, and one has to ask why they do this. Primera operated primarily from Copenhagen, Denmark, but were owned in Iceland and registered (this year) in Latvia, although they seem to have had no operations from that country. The aircraft registrations rolled around between these three over time. Furthermore the Transatlantic flights were principally from the UK. The traditional national CAA structure was not designed for regulating this sort of thing.