Blue Air will suspend operations today
 

Blue Air will suspend ops for at least a week after the Romanian government frozen its accounts.

Romanian carrier Blue Air grounded by government | Travel Weekly
Blue Air suspends all flights from Romanian airports for a week | Romania Insider (romania-insider.com)
Romania's Blue Air suspends operations, blames the state - ch-aviation

The quoted links only tell a part of the story. Apparently the accounts were frozen because Blue Air owed $7m in fees to the government (unclear if this is some penalty, or built up during regular operations).

Air Connect mentioned in the articles is an outfit set up by bailed out former Blue Air excecs, apparently they saw this coming for some time and established a clean company to take on some of the more profitable routes after the inevitable demise.

The Environmental Fund Administration has decided to suspend the seizure of the financial assets of the Blue Air Aviation company and to establish a 12-month schedule for the payment of the debt.
https://www.nineoclock.ro/2022/09/07...tion-accounts/

Fleet questions
 

Very sad to see this. I think I remember something similar happening around 2010/11 where an aircraft was seized by the lessor at LTN, and before long, they down sized significantly, retiring the 738s previously operated by Ryanair and Air Berlin, and were left with a very small and old fleet of 733s, 734s and 735s. :( Assuming they will be able to restart operations from the 10th October, what will the fleet composition be like? An initial fleet of 5 is being reported elsewhere, so will this include (some) of the 737 Max?

I'm also wondering what will happen as far as their route network goes and which ones are likely to face the chop? As an example, I think London will be very difficult for them to re-enter. W6 have already announced that they will significantly increase frequency on LTN-OTP to 5/daily from October, and I'm unsure whether they will be able to afford the landing charges at LHR.

Great Blue Air picture here,

https://www.planespotters.net/photo/...boeing-737-530

https://cdn.planespotters.net/27487/...0e8a56eb_o.jpg

It would be sad not seeing that anymore :}

There might be a problem with friction around the undercarriage. :ok:

Indeed, those Denver Boots are hard to shake.

Fleet updates
 

Apparently Blue Air are to keep the 5 737 Max-8s as part of their fleet restructuring. The remaining 737-500, 700 and 800s will all be retired, with the 800s already returned to their lessors.

Source: https://boardingpass.ro/blue-air-18-...-de-rezervari/

It appears that Blue Air's planned resumption of operations is in doubt: https://www.aviacionline.com/2022/09...ooking-system/