Mat to resume flights?

Mat voluntarily grounds aircraft to prepare for competition
Macedonia’s Mat Airways could resume services next week after it grounded one of its aircraft, as reported on Monday. The airline says that it voluntarily grounded its Boeing 737-500 and took “time out” to reconsider its position on the market and better prepare for increased competition. Mat Airways operated its last service on June 20. Since then its sole aircraft has been grounded while Skywings International Airlines decided to split from Mat, only a month after it joined the charter airline. Mat’s management says that its aircraft will probably return to the sky next week and has been given a new look. On the other hand, Mat has halted the sale of all its tickets.

The Macedonian Civil Aviation Agency says that it did not play a part in Mat’s service suspension and adds that the airline has a permit to operate flights from Skopje and Ohrid to Zurich, Dusseldorf, Berlin, Hamburg, Vienna and Copenhagen until June 15, 2012.

Meanwhile, the Turkish low cost Pegasus Airlines will commence 3 weekly flights from Istanbul’s Gokcen Airport to Skopje and 2 weekly flights from Izmir to the Macedonian capital. The airline will compete against Turkish Airlines, which operates flights to Skopje out of Istanbul’s Ataturk Airport. Flights from Izmir commence on August 15, while services from Istanbul will begin a day later on August 16. Flight details can be found on the right hand side in the new route launches section.

Comments

  1. Anonymous10:09

    Booooring!
    Mat is a crap airline more on the ground than in the sky and does not deserve to be mentioned at all while we see it as a topic second time within a week

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous10:40

    I like their colors.

    ReplyDelete
  3. The tickets of MAT Airways are way too expensive compared to others, serving ( almost ) the same route. They have to lower the prices and focus on much-needed routes.

    ReplyDelete
  4. crew10:49

    This is actually funny! Really! :)))

    I mean, "national airline" with one aircraft, stopping and resuming flights with no plan whatsoever... I guess it not an airline but a hobby for few people working there :)

    Typical Balkan airline, actually. Crappy JAT would probably do the same if they were smaller.

    ReplyDelete
  5. great news from Pegasus, I wanted to go to Izmir, the cheapest option was via Thessaloniki with THY for 280EUR, Pegasus is now offering flights for the same time period from SKP for 80EUR. Great Great!

    ReplyDelete
  6. alex13:04

    @ first anonymous:
    You have no idea of anything so stop talking shit, if you dont like it, do not read it, and shout up u stupid hater, we allways see here topic from belgrade or zagreb three times per week so its good that there is something about macedonia, and not from all the croatian/serbian aviation.

    @crew
    Mat Airways is not a national (macedonian) career or airline, its a serbian career with serbian management... but you are right, typical balkan airline...


    MAT should get new routes with a smaller airplane and cheaper tickets...

    ReplyDelete
  7. @ alex,

    It's not that anyone here hates Macedonia, we are just bored with this news about MAT Airways or whatever its name is. This airline is not serious at all and doesn't deserve the space on this blog. On the contrary, I am always very happy to read about SKP Airport expansion and new airlines serving SKP and OHD. MAT should be closed forever and save the country from embarrassment.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Just look at their paint job. Looks awful. Half of the tail is some rainbow star and the other half still from the previous airline's livery. Also, why would they put Kon Tiki title on the airplane, if the airline is named MAT? The same is for Skywings / Airlift and AirBosna/BH Airlines. They each have one aircraft and tons of names. So Balkan, so messy.

    ReplyDelete
  9. crew15:12

    @alex

    They wanted to be a macedonian national airline, in a way. Serbian mangement? OK, if you say so. Please read this and name serbian members:

    http://www.matairways.mk/management.asp

    They even hired serbian crews last year, only to get rid of them 2-3 months later. Nice.

    P.S. It's "carrier" not "career". "Career" is a person's work progress. You probably mixed it accidentally, I'm sure you know that. :)

    ReplyDelete
  10. Anonymous16:54

    Well anyhow the airport in SKP is really funny :))
    Alex the "Great"

    ReplyDelete
  11. @Sam

    B&H Airlines does not have one only one aircraft and I am not sure where you get that from.

    Now as for the MAT story, I think now that their airplane has new paint all of their problems are solved.* This is pretty typical though, spending money on items that offer no return whatsoever.

    *Please note this is sarcasm.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Anonymous18:13

    I like the way you follow both bigger and smaller SEE companies, so keep it that way.

    ReplyDelete
  13. @ E
    About BH Airlines: If I am not mistaken, they are getting rid of one of the ATRs and the A319 belongs to TK (it's not even registered in Bosnia). So what's left? 1 ATR. Worse than MAT Airways.

    ReplyDelete
  14. That is not quite right. B&H has three airplanes currently. They have two A319 on order according to Airbus and they are to be delivered this year. Turkish Airlines was to provide a plane under the purchase agreement and that is what the current A319 is. Even if they got rid of one ATR and the Turkish owned A319 that would leave them with three planes. Also there are many airlines that lease planes so would you say that they do not have them in their fleet?

    In general I think the ex-yu airlines need to make better use of the resources they have including planes. Who cares if you have a thousand planes if you can do the same job with 50.

    http://www.airbus.com/fileadmin/backstage/documents/orders_deliveries_table/Airbus_OrdersDeliveries_March_2011.xls

    ReplyDelete
  15. Anonymous22:06

    BH airlines is selling 1 out of their 2 ATRs. and they have on order for 2 more A319, even though they already have 1 idk why they need more, and they said the order may be cancelled. So they will be left with at least 1 ATR and 1 A319. god knows what will happen from now on with them, we will have to wait and see!

    Also, they have a piper seneca aircraft in their fleet! perfect size airplane for their number of pax! jk

    ReplyDelete

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