Darwin Airline, which has been operating under the Adria Airways Switzerland brand, has begun bankruptcy proceedings with almost all of its 250 employees to be laid off. Management told staff yesterday that the carrier will no longer fly. It comes just five months after the holding firm 4K Invest, which owns Adria Airways, purchased a majority stake in the Lugano-based airline through its newly created subsidiary Adria Airways Switzerland. Its fleet of ten turboprops have been grounded since late November when the Swiss Federal Office of Civil Aviation (FOCA) revoked the carrier's license due to uncertainty over its financing. Previously, the regional carrier said it had encountered "several unfavourable market impacts”, which have led to its demise. They include the termination of all business contracts with Alitalia and Air Berlin.
Adria plans to transfer Darwin's six Saab 2000 aircraft to the Slovenian registry and base them in Ljubljana, while the remaining four leased ATR72 turboptops will be returned to their owners. However, the grounding of Darwin's aircraft, some of which have been based in Ljubljana and operating on Adria Airways' behalf over the past few months, has recently forced the Slovenian carrier to lease additional capacity. As a result, the airline also intends on wet-leasing a Fokker 100 jet during the first quarter of 2018. Its planned major network expansion for next year, which will see it add six new routes from Ljubljana, relies on the addition of the Saabs to its mainline fleet.
Lugano Airport, which has served as Darwin's base noted it was "perplexed by the latest development". Less than half a year ago, the Slovenian national carrier said in a statement, "Adria Airways, with its extensive expertise, its strong route network, especially in the Southeast European market, will be very beneficial not only to the future of Darwin but also to the Ticino region, which needs good connections with the rest of Switzerland and throughout Europe. Darwin Airline is well capitalised and solvent, thus able to honour all of its commitments to creditors". Darwin Airline was established in 2003. It had codeshare agreements in place with Air Serbia, Alitalia and Etihad Airways, all of which have now been suspended.
Well that adventure lasted long.
ReplyDeleteThe grounding of the Saabs is becoming problematic for Adria.
ReplyDeleteDoes anyone know how long before they can start operating them again?
DeleteI assume until bankruptcy proceedings are finished, which they obviously don't expect before summer 2018 since they are leasing planes.
Delete"Adria Airways, with its extensive expertise, its strong route network, especially in the Southeast European market, will be very beneficial not only to the future of Darwin but also to the Ticino region, which needs good connections with the rest of Switzerland and throughout Europe. Darwin Airline is well capitalised and solvent, thus able to honour all of its commitments to creditors"
ReplyDeleteThat worked out well.
And the guy from Lugano Airport also said how the Adria takeover was a good thing. Now they will be left without any flights and with a couple of hundred unemployed people.
DeleteFound it
DeleteThe Chairman of the Board of Lugano Airport, Emilio Bianchi, said, "Clearly we are losing one partner (Etihad), but it's good that there is a company that will replace them. Adria Airways is a very serious company and has a very good reputation". He added, "We need to understand their strategy. We will have the opportunity to meet the new heads of the airline in due course, but this seems to us as positive news. It proves that there is still some interest in regional airlines, which are very important for an airport like ours".
So much for those synergies Adria was talking about for Darwin.
DeleteLugano had before, and still have Swiss route Lugano-Zurich, 4 times per day, operated by Austrian.
DeleteIt is big deal not to have 2 flights to Geneva per day, and few seasonal routes which were operated by Darwin. But it is not end of the World, not even for Lugano airport. Most of passengers were use Swiss route to Zurich, I presume Swiss will put some extra capacity on Zurich route, maybe they will open Geneva flights if there is potentials, and someone else will fly those summer charters and routes.
And to think that last month they announced opening a base in Bern.
ReplyDeleteIt was probably their last hope. Had Skywork gone bust and they started flying from Bern they wouldn't be declaring bankruptcy right now.
DeleteIt would have saved him and again helped Swiss but to their dissatisfaction SkyWork lived to see another day.
DeleteAs expected. Consider the same team is running Adria.
ReplyDeleteExactly the same people running Adria were involved with Darwin. Hope Adria doesn't go down the same path.
DeleteThey should use these planes and set up Adria Regional or something like that and fly them on nearby routes but still differentiate the product between their CRJ/Airbuses and these turboprops.
ReplyDeleteHow in the world are they going to use the Saabs if the company that owns them is bankrupt? You can't just move property around like oranges.
DeleteWell they obviously plan to somehow. They set up their whole summer schedule with those Saabs. All the new routes they announced will be operated by Saab planes.
DeleteWhich just shows they are incompetent.
DeleteThere are some rumours that they will lease 3 CRJ900s so maybe that should be enough maybe.
DeleteWell they are hiring new pilots for the CRJs so it is possible.
DeleteBecause adria (4K) is owner of the company and that would be a part of bancrupcy proc
DeleteYes, Adria will lease 2 CRJ-900 (maybe even 3) that I can confirm.
DeleteI don't think this is so much Adria's fault as it is Etihad's.
ReplyDeleteHow? Adria said Darwin was solvent when they bought it. The collapse of Air Berlin and Alitalia can't be used for Darwins' troubles. They could have found other customers.
DeleteEtihad did a terrible job with Darwin. They ceased two thirds of its scheduled routes
DeleteAt least they kept them flying.
Delete... and set them up for failure.
Delete@Anonymous December 13, 2017 at 10:13 AM
DeletePlease Etihad killed Alitalia and Air Berlin, they are hardly saints.
The loss of Alitalia and Air Berlin contracts are just excuses. Of course they were both expected - and that's the very reason the airline was for sale. There's no way this was a surprise to 4K.
DeleteEkonomski parametri su im losi i nikako bacanje para slovenacke vlade im nece pomoci. Ko se sa LH igra uvek se opece. Nemci su to.
ReplyDeleteNisam siguran da ovo sve nije u reziji LH.
DeleteA nego u cijoj reziji?
DeletePa upravo kazem da verujem da iza svega stoji LH.
DeleteIt wasn't 4Ks idea to buy Darwin, that's for sure.
DeleteDarwin's transfer to Lufthansa was arranged at the start of the year during the talks between Lufthansa and Etihad in Abu Dhabi when it was also arranged that they would get large parts of Air Berlin. Lufthansa probably didn't need Darwin and wanted to avoid EU competition scrutiny so they handed it over to their 4k fund.
DeleteYou have all story on my article from last week:
Deletehttps://tangosix.rs/2017/05/12/kolumna-alena-scurica-hoce-li-se-u-nasoj-regiji-ponoviti-darwinov-scenarij/
I do wonder for how much they bought them. I assume it was nothing.
ReplyDeleteWe will probably know from their financial report next year.
DeleteI doubt it was more than they bought Adria for.
DeleteSta reci.
ReplyDeleteMoj naklon Purgeru.
Ja bi Purgera na mjesto premijera postavio.
živo me interesuje kako se ovo uklapa u teoriju "4K je to sve prezeo za luftiku"
Deleteimho, ovo je dokaz suprtotnog
Danas je objavljeno da Kinezi ispadaju iz trke za Aerodrom Beograd a Purger je po tom pitanju govorio sledece:
Delete...Prirodno je da ista ta HNA grupa želi u isto vrijeme preuzeti Air Serbiju i Aerodrom Beograd...
...I ovdje se postavlja pitanje zašto? Očito je da su Kinezi ovaj posao stvarno odlučili dobiti i da će ponuditi daleko više od samog aerodroma, toliko više da to jednostavno neće moći biti odbijeno...
...U tom svjetlu treba gledati i otvaranje Hainanove linije Peking-Prag-Beograd. Ona nije slučajno otvorena, kao što nije slučajno istovremeno odlučeno da se ne otvori već najavljena linija za Zagreb. Upravo ova linija je vrlo indikativna. Otvorena je iako Beograd ima neusporedivo manje potencijala nego Zagreb ili neki drugi aerodromi u široj regiji. I to pokazuje i dokazuje ne samo koliki je utjecaj politike u ovom slučaju, nego da se ovdje radi o daleko većem poslu (većem i od aerodroma), a vjerojatno da je DEAL VEC UNAPRIJED DOGOVOREN
https://tangosix.rs/2017/07/11/kolumna-alena-scurica-hoce-li-etihad-otici-iz-er-srbije-koja-je-sansa-da-je-hainan-kupi/
Hvala Beduin. Petra pročitajte moj članak.
DeleteNebojša, ovu informaciju nisam čuo. Opala, iznenađenje. Naglašavam da ja nisam nigdje ustvrdio da je tako nego se svigdje govori "vjerojatno" (to je vidljivo i u Vašim citatima). No, jednako tako postoji i nekoliko drugih mogućih scenarija koje sam napisao u istom tom članku. No, da je sve ukazivalo da će kinezi dobiti taj posao, stvarno jest. Sada će trebat kopati i vidjeti što je razlog toga, tj. tko će posao dobiti. Ako dobe europejci sve je jasno. No, za to ipak treba pričekati kraj natječaja. Kako god, smatram da su kinezi bili najbolja opcija za Beograd, no... Tko kaže da najbolja opcija mora biti i odabrana. Nažalost veliki su igrači u igri, involvirani su moćni ljudi, a to je daleko bitnije...
http://www.exyuaviation.com/2017/12/chinese-withdraw-from-belgrade.html
DeleteAnd to think how people were celebrating here when they bought Darwin. It lasted the whole of 5 months.
ReplyDeleteShame. Feel sorry for the 250 people who lost their jobs.
ReplyDeleteLufthansa is the one that will benefit so no one will care.
Delete350, not 250.
DeleteIt's about 180. Many people left much earlier before ...
DeleteThose saabs are still grounded. One was planned to fly to Vienna today but was again replaced by CRJ. I think they are no longer using that Carpatair fokker anymore though.
ReplyDeleteIf the Saabs are unusable during the summer, they won't be able to wet lease their CRJs out. And that seems to be a money maker for them.
DeleteLook at the last few Adria articles here. It's not just the 6 new routes it's also a significant increase in frequencies on other routes. Not leasing out 1 CRJ to some Star Alliance airline over the summer won't be enough to cover all of the planned growth.
DeleteWhy did they buy them to start with? They obviously knew the company is close to bankruptcy ...
ReplyDeleteProbably for the six planes and crew without paying much.
DeleteWhat a mess this turned out to be.
ReplyDeleteNew saying: Dabogda te kupila Adria.
ReplyDelete"Adria plans to transfer Darwin's six Saab 2000 aircraft to the Slovenian registry and base them in Ljubljana"
ReplyDeleteIt never was about the company it was just about the aircrafts. If think they made their mathematics. Its cheaper to buy the whole company than to purchase just the Saabs. Remember these people are investors and they want to see money.
After all, I think this was a smart economic move by Adria Airways but I have compassion for the 250 employees
+1
DeleteI agree with you and I think these people are much smarter than the public here gives them credit. Same way they wet lease out planes to other airlines and at the same time lease in planes. They probably calculated that they would make money that way.
Deletein order to buy a/c you have to utilize them profitably
Deleteit is very hard to make profit on those planes
1. fixed costs are crazy
2. variable costs are crazy because those are inefficient planes
3. adria doesn't have the market where to put those planes
Petar, Petar... I know you despise everything north from Kolpa, but...
Deletethe new lines announced a week or two ago will be served by what if not saabs?
The Saabs have been already used on some routes. E.g. LJU-SKP was mostly flown by the Saabs.
DeleteI see a lot of doom-mongering on this topic. The same was with Air Serbia and WizzAir in Macedonia. There were many naysayers but in the end almos everything turned out good.
i don't know if i am too pessimistic as some of you are suggesting, but from my knowledge of the airline finances it is really hard to make something work.
Deleteit is especially hard to make new routes on saturated markets with a lot of substitutes, with non-efficient planes
let's wait and see
btw, what is kolpa?
btw2, airserbia didn't turned out good, the company is hemorrhaging 40mil€ per year, come on!
Petar he wanted to say that you hate Slovenia, Kolpa or Kupa is the river on the border between Croatia and Slovenia, hence you love ex yu, minus Slovenia ahaha
Deleteconsidering the kind of people they are sending to eurovision each year i have every right!
DeleteAhahaha +1000
DeletePeter, where is JU bleeding EUR40m / year ?
Delete1 mil profit
Delete41 mil state subsidies
40 mil net loss
I wouldn't be surprised if 4K takes Air Serbia next.
ReplyDeleteAnd declares bankruptcy in 2 months and takes their 20 planes? :D
DeleteNo, they would take the 737s and the ATRs to operate their summer routes and return the rest to the lessor :D
DeleteSo how did Adria benefit from Darwin?
ReplyDeleteit didn't
Deletethere is a lot of crazy rumors & theories
the one i don't get is some grand scheme of lufthansa
why in the world would LH bother with these peanut businesses serving couple of village markets and who would finance such money losers is beyond me
Maybe LH feared that a bigger foreign player could buy Darwin and make something out of it. I remember Swiss was in panic mode when Etihad bought Darwin and they tried everything to stop the sale. They just didn't need the nuisance and a potential competitor.
DeleteBecause it's cheaper?
DeleteKo malo prati "uspesni" Swiss zna da su se oni spasli preko svoje male kompanije registrovane u Ticinu. Ne zele nikakvu konkurenciju u buducnosti.
Deleteto me LH is playing waiting game. darwin was a money losing business, and anyone buying it was doomed.
DeleteLH je preuzela obavezu oko Darwina i istovaraila ih je preko 4K. Na papiru su cisti a inace su krivi do neba. Slicno i Etihad koji je rado pristao na ovu saradu. Samo su se ovdasnji radovali "napretku" Adrie.
DeleteI agree with Petar, the LH rumors are a bunch of hogwash. They are doing with Adria what they were doing with that supermarket chain in Finland - some accounting magic, some expensive 'consultant' contracts, they will try to keep it alive as long as possible and at the end, they're going to close the shop.
Delete4K have always been refereed to as a private equity company. Traditionally these guys buy struggling companies at a massive discount and try to turn them around where they will than sell them to make a good profit or list them on a stock exchange and cash in on the shares. Not sure if Darwin didn't work out for them as planned or maybe it's part of their strategy to make Adria look bigger (larger fleet) and more impressive so they can eventually sell it at a premium.
DeleteI actually don't think they planned to bankrupt Darwin. It looks as if they had a different strategy but as time moved on it probably came obvious to them that saving Darwin would just mean loosing money.
ReplyDeleteI find it very hard to believe that Adria or 4K didn't know what state Darwin was in when they were planning to buy it. They knew exactly what they were getting themselves into and I tend to believe there is some other motive.
ReplyDelete+1
DeleteUnfortunate. Their on board product and service were quite good.
ReplyDeletestop thinking in aviation logic, rather look at this development from business side i.e. money gives a s....t for you aviation lovers and follows only one goal - more profit. If the higher goal was to clean backyard for Swiss, they did that very successfully. It is good thing though, that AA can't keep the Saabs, they are just awful planes, turboprop version of money gosling CRJ200. I presume that the operational staff of Darwin will be given choice to join AA (at least I hope)
ReplyDeleteI agree. And AA will probably get rewarded for Darwin.
DeleteAs for staff yesterday they announced that all 250 staff were going to be fired.
They just wasted money on painting that livery on the Saabs for no reason.
ReplyDeleteAnd now they will have to repaint them again.
Deletemaybe they've just used some cheap stickers, and now they can easily peel them off?
DeleteThey probably did. In Slovenia they use stickers for Adria planes. Nothing is painted.
DeleteI do wonder if 4K plans to buy any more airlines. There were rumors about Croatia Airlines, Montenegro Airlines and now Air Serbia.
ReplyDeleteI sure hope not seeing how they managed Darwin.
DeleteToo many this year.
ReplyDeleteStill don't know what to think of this. Leaves a lot of open questions.
ReplyDeleteI predicted that they wouldn't be able to finance taking on another airline. With all due respect, Adria is far from a financially stable company.
ReplyDeleteI'm interested to know where they found the money to buy Darwin? Less than a year ago they sold Adria's brand name to survive.
DeleteThe price was probably peanuts.
DeleteMy guess is, it was free.
DeleteInteresting times ahead.
ReplyDeleteI thought Adria would have used Darwin to feed their flights to the Balkans from Switzerland. Guess not.
ReplyDeleteSwitzerland is pretty well connected to the Balkans.
DeleteIf Lufthansa/Swiss was behind this deal like some suggest, why would they not have done it themselves?
ReplyDeleteBecause they already own one Swiss airline and regulators would not allow them to own a second one.
DeleteYes because LH cannot otherwise get 6 old Saabs! LH desperately needs those planese, otherwise they will suffer the same fate like AB if they do not buy these. It cannot just but and expand SWISS. IRONY OFF!
DeleteNo, Lufthansa did not want some new deal like Darwin-Etihad, maybe even with more dangerous competition. So, they eliminate this possibility. Quick and on clean way (they are "not involved").
DeleteWhat dangerous competition? Darwin is as much a competition for Swiss or LH as Air Tahiti is for air Serbia. Their real competitor is easyJet and Ryanair in EU and EK, EY or TK globally.
DeleteAlen, you should think in "bigger" dimensions. LH does not really bother if Darwin flies or not. They just don´t like the name of the company that was on Darwins planes. Darwin as a company is NO threat at all for LH.
DeleteLH stoji iza propasti Darwina ne trebaju im krdzavi turbopropovi niti sudjenje sa radnicima Darwina. Ostrijan leti sada iz Lugana.
DeleteDefinitely not a good year for airlines in Europe.
ReplyDelete4K did not invest anything in Darwin, despite promises to do so. The final collapse is not only due to the loss of business contracts with AZ and AB, but was initiated by the FOCA three years ago, when the purchase of a stake in Darwin by Etihad took 18 months to clear, precisely as long as it took Darwin to run out of money on its own. So Etihad Regional became an ACMI carrier with an insignificant network out of Geneva and Lugano. The loss of the aforementioned business and the failure of investments into Darwin by 4K now led to the final closure.
ReplyDeleteIt seems as if 4K had acquired a stake in darwin in a hurry and without doing a proper due diligence. After seeing the true figures, it comes as no surprise that 4K sends Darwin down the dole. Darwin was a "dole" candidate since the deadly price war national carrier Swiss started on them, and FOCA's lenghty assessment of Etihad's stake, which was ignited by Swiss!
Very good remark wit one note. It was ignited by LH and pushed by LX. Other than that time, LH has nothing to do with 4K or Darwin who was hybernating as an airline even before Etihad was around.
Deletethis ideas that you got that LH is behind all of these acquisitions are nonsense, imho
ReplyDeleteScenario 1.
4k bought both airline and will resell them to LH
this means that 4K had to have some signed agreement with LH that it will buy it after restructuring, otherwise LH could just let them down the drain. there is no signed agreement obviously, so what the hell are we even discussing this?
also, why didn't LH bought adria and darwin in the first place? it has much more restructuring experience and it would tailor the company according to its needs, without hassle to do a second round of restructuring once they bought them.
Scenario 2.
4k bought both airline and will resell them to anybody
most likely scenario, i mean, these guys are investment bankers after all. but they even destroyed value in the mean time, so who will they sell the company to is beyond me
Scenario 3.
LH bankrolled 4K to buy both companies and then bankrupt them in order to gain market share
this is the wildest theory i see here. this assumes some shady payments to 4k. my question is how would lufthansa make these payments to 4k and why would highest officers of the LH risk their position because of these peanut figures?
Petar what do we know about 4K? Who are owners, which projects they had in past, whose capital is behind. Please help me, as I really try hard to find those information.
DeleteIt will be first time that Lufthansa and other companies similar to Lufthansa would use some phantom company for dirty jobs?
1) Owner of JP is 4K invest. Yes, the last link in the chain of the companies is unknown, but I can tell you it is not 'Deutsche Lufthansa AG'.
Delete2) They (4k invest) bought a chain of supermarkets in Finland a couple of years ago and they managed it the same way they manage JP. The supermarket chain went bust at the end.
3) You tell us of credible examples, where LH used a shadow company for some sinister purpose.
4K have always been refereed to as a private equity company. Traditionally these guys buy struggling companies at a massive discount and try to turn them around where they will than sell them to make a good profit or list them on a stock exchange and cash in on the shares. Not sure if Darwin didn't work out for them as planned or maybe it's part of their strategy to make Adria look bigger (larger fleet) and more impressive so they can eventually sell it at a premium.
Delete@Q400
Delete+1
u said well, thats how they do.
Petar and Q400 I think you are both correct. One more thing to point out is the massive recruitment of pilots going on at Adria at the moment. If you look at their website, they are recruiting experienced and non-experienced pilots. On latestpilotjobs.com there is even a job opening for Saab captains. The later makes me wonder if they are still counting on Saabs, however I'm not sure they'll be able to register them in Slovenia, considering Swiss CAA somehow managed to outsmart them.
DeleteAll is going the way it went in the US some 10-15 years ago. In a decade or so, we will have 4 or 5 big systems (LH+OS, KL+AF, BA+IB, FR and maybe U2) while all other airlines will be incorporated in the first three mentioned big systems. Time will tell if the big airlines will merge and rebrand themself but I would not be surprised if JP and OU would eventually become some sort of "Lufthansa connection" in a way like Delta has many operators tied under the same brand.
ReplyDeleteThis is a great opportunity for Adria to take the turboprops and set-up shop in SKP or OHD and take advantage of the concessions for new routes. There are plenty of opportunities to improve connections in the region. The Saabs would be perfect for SKP-SOF, OHD-BEG, SKP-SKG, SKP-SJJ, SKP-TGD, SKP-ATH, SKP-DBV runs.
ReplyDeleteAt 6pm Niki declared bancuptcy after LH had to give up on them due to unfaverouble EU ruling.
ReplyDeleteToliko o nasem analiticaru Purgeru.
DeleteAnon 7:50, ne pravi se pametan. Svi mi griješimo.
DeleteU čemu sam ja to pogriješio?
DeleteU članku o Darwinu sam napisao da će otići na bubanj i otišao je. Isto tako sam naveo da postoje kompanije koje je Lufthansa namjerno odvela u propast. Stoga i ovo sa NIKI-em ne treba čuditi. Ni prva, ni posljednja koja će u ropotarnicu povijesti radi Lufthanse.
Provaljuju te po forumima. Npr. К'о Пургер, све поменеш свима даш вероватноћу али са оградама, а онда кад се деси - јесам рекао?
DeleteAnon 7:52, a ti prenosiš ono što se piše po drugim forumima jer ne možeš izraziti vlastito mišljenje?
DeleteI to što se ja odgrađujem je "pogreška"?
DeleteU današnje vrijeme možete samo pretpostavljati, stvarati zaključke iz činjenica, indicija, događaja, poteza. Što više indicija to čvršče uvjerenje. Ali iznositi čvrste teze? Teško. Čak i priopčenja kompanija nisu sigurna (sječate se kako je Emirates rekao da nema interesa u regiji iako je vrlo brzo pokrenuo letove za Zagreb).
P.S.
Molio bih informaciju na kojim je to forumima (plural) bilo? Hvala.
Airlines in Europe (and worldwide) are reporting record profits. If you struggle now, maybe you don't deserve to survive? Survival of the fittest...
ReplyDeleteI to što se ja odgrađujem je "pogreška"?
ReplyDeleteU današnje vrijeme možete samo pretpostavljati, stvarati zaključke iz činjenica, indicija, događaja, poteza. Što više indicija to čvršče uvjerenje. Ali iznositi čvrste teze? Teško. Čak i priopčenja kompanija nisu sigurna (sječate se kako je Emirates rekao da nema interesa u regiji iako je vrlo brzo pokrenuo letove za Zagreb).
P.S.
Molio bih informaciju na kojim je to forumima (plural) bilo? Hvala.