If I was 4K, I would be looking for an exit strategy right about now.

This is worrying.

They said how Darwin was stable as well. I really hope it doesn't have the same outcome because of these cowboys.

That's why you don't sell strategically important companies to unknown investment funds.

What would happen if hypothetically Adria went bankrupt. Who would cover the market? Would it be LCCs or we would see Lufthansa and their partners start flights?

Not to worry, Lufthansa will recapitalise.

Adria will soon be history!

haha, NO!

My guess is Austrian, Lufthansa and Swiss would all start flights from their respective markets while Ryanair would open a base in Ljubljana.

lol

Gdje je sad Purger sa cuvenim hvalospevima?

Former Adria CEO (during state run Adria) was on TV yesterday and said it would take at least 2 yrs for the sector in Slovenia to recover if Adria went bankrupt.

And these guys want to buy Montenegro and Croatia Airlines?

Eurowings - but unfortunately virtually all of the 'big players' have severe lack of airplanes and crews, so in the short run, it's going to be mayhem.

No - they wanted to give the impression that they are a succesful company which is expanding, thus the constant bombardment in the media, about how the are going to buy Sukhois, Croatian, constant expansion etc. But the lies have caught up with them, so now, they will bail out - but they still made a giant profit.

If Adria were to go bankrupt, LJU would experience a 12 month crisis during which it would have to find partners to fill in the void of up to 70% of flights operated from the airport

And let's not forget the investigation in Switzerland and how it could affect Adria which is directly implicated as I believe the money that disappeared from Darwin ended up on Adria's accounts.

JP is not strategically important - Slovenians do not use it (I mean normal Slovenians). We all know there are going to be at the most five airlines in the EU in the next 20 years.

The profitable routes will be taken over by Eurowings, and that's that.

There are current predictions of numerous carriers going bust, especially in competitive markets such as Europe. The oil prices will hit them hard.
I am sure 4K will do their job and secure funding. The most important thing is to convert LJU into a regional hub as Zagreb obviously was unable to do so during the last 5 years.

That would not be easy. After Adria, destinations such as VIE FRA MUC ZRH and BRU will be covered by the others but that is the less than quarter of the Adria's network. I am sure that Balkan flights wont be covered as that destinations are only for transit pax. Many other routes without transfer pax from the Balkans are not viable either.

LJU would be connected to FRA, MUC, VIE, WAW, ZRH, BRU, CDG, Moscow and BEG. Other remains for LCCs.

Adria provides a decent range of destinations and it did contribute greatly to Ljubljana and Slovenia.

Not to mention that any new airline that would start flying out of LJU will not be able to offer the amount of destinations and frequencies Adria had!

In any case, it would be so sad to see Adria closing completely. I keep my fingers crossed for Adria!

OU should make a move on Ljubljana. They park a number of aircraft during the winter, why not base 2-3 planes in Ljubljana instead? They will also be moving into a Star Alliance hub so setting up bookings should not be too difficult.

Last Anon, +1

Ljubljana airport would survive and prosper. More tourists visitors will come by air. Low budget airlines would come first. British and other "real" players would come next. They need more time for planning. Who care if no more Ljubljana Tirana direct. You can fly from Trieste.
AIrFrance is for Paris, Turkish for Istanbul etc. New airlines would come.

Considering how many problems Croatia Airlines had with its own operations this year it would be impossible.

"Adria continues to face operational issues, with four of its flights cancelled yesterday alone. The carrier has so far cancelled a further three flights for today and at least one for tomorrow."

This is crazy. When will it end?

And what would OU do with Ljubljana in summer. They barely have enough aircraft for their own ops during summer months.

there would be nobody who would try to replicate a hub in LJU. it just does not make much sense to start a new hub in minor city theses days. (and if anybody was to buy croatia, they would probably kill the ZAG hub on the first day.)

for sure, LH would try to make some capacity available for MUC, ZRH, VIE and maybe FRA, but I do not see any rush by easyjet or ryanair to open a base LJU because there are ist not a single adria route at the moment that has enough p2p passengers that would fill any of their planes

If Adria Is a smart company they should open a sister company in Macedonia (Adria- Macedonia with 3 aircraft for example CRJ900) and they will make money flying to destinations like Zurich,Vienna,Dusseldorf on daily basis from Skopje, and from Friday to Sunday from Skopje via Ohrid airport (there is a tax benefit by TAV).

You got to wonder whather all this talks about bankruptcy is driving business away from Adria.

Good luck, Adria

Time to nationalize.

What's driving away business is the constant cancellations and flight delays.

Haha yes, because government did a great jobs while it was running Adria.

The Macedonian market is already covered quite well by 3 dominant carriers namely: Wizz Air, Turkish Airlines and Austrian Airlines. Additionally, there doesn't seem to be demand for the primary airports neither.

Tha ship has sailed. Could have worked and been a smart move in 2010. Not it's too late.

Predictions were all gloomy when Malév went bankrupt in the winter of 2012 and just look at Budapest today with long-hauls and the impressive success of W6.
LJU will immediately be conquered by the bigger boys in case JP becomes history, which I doubt.

Um, ZAG did much better than LJU in the last 4 years that Fraport owned LJU. Also LJU is too close to MUC and VIE, both of which have strong Legacy and LCC presences, as well as LH/TATL routes, for LJU to be a serious contender for a regional hub.

But the Hungarian market is much bigger than the Slovenian one. And Malev was made redundant because of Wizz Air.

I hope Adria weathers this crisis and wish them all the best.

I suppose they are doing it as we chat.

I think there is no way for JP to survive the winter. The collapse is inevitable.Bad news for LJU airport and Slovenian tourism. I think that OU has bit more backing from it's country but will eventually follow its path due to EU rules and regulations, which are clearly lobbyistic and favour the big ones.

Adria is in need of quite a substantial amount of money this winter. Let's see what happens.

@9:41 Exactly to the point!
The same goes for Zagreb and Belgrade once OU and JU are gone. Airports will have some hiccups but recover fastly.

@9:10

I had a brief exchange with him last week - I think he backpedaled quite a bit, but he denies it. He says, his argument all along was that JP has been conected with LH basically throughout its history (via Star Alliance, feeding its flights etc), and THAT'S what he meant when he said Lufthansa was behind 4K. He even wrote, that there is a good chance JP will go bankrupt, if 4K doesn't 'prepare' Adria sufficiently.

I would say it will be miracle if they make it to Decembre. If the media is right, it's just a matter of days or weeks until one of the fuel companies refuses it's services to JP. And also look at the stagering amount of cancelled flights this week.

If the decide to create something similar to AirDolomiti, but just for the Balkans. It would make sense to have Adria linking Munich hub with all exYU/Western Balkans airports.

4K have proven themselves as a bunch of complete amateurs. Their idea of saving a company is to start at the end and work their way to the beginning. They thought by smiling to the passengers and serving them a cup of free water is somehow magically going to generate higher revenues.

The main problem for Adria is that they have a small market. They relied a lot on transit pax from ex-Yu countries but now more and more airlines are flying to the region and less people are transiting through LJU. I actually think it’s wise that they made a base in PRN because it was the only way they could get more passengers. They also should have made a base in Skopje when MAT went bankrupt. Now it’s too late.

But the most important thing in all this mess is that they are opening a base in Paderborn in a few days!!!

the main problem for Adria is not the right yield management and even not the right marketing.

I'd blame the losses on Adria's price structure. Definitely the highest in the region.

Does anyone know what happened to Adria's flight school? Is it still owned by Adria/4k Invest?

4k will provide fresh funds from another one of their phantom companies. They did the same last year. Now that company which gave Adria the loan has also declared insolvency.

You got to wonder whather the Slovenian government did some screening of 4K before they decided to sell Adria to it.

Agree with last anon. If Adria goes under it would be a big loss for Slovenia. That's why I think it won't happen.

More like gave away not sold.

Some quicker tan others.

Anonymous 09:19, so if Slovenians don't use it, that means it's not strategically important? What are you talking about?

Also, I don't know where you found the fact that Slovenians don't use it.

It depends if Macedonia, Serbia and Montenegro would give them such rights.

Slowly but surely, all Ex-YU airlines will either disappear or come to a realization that only working together will enable them to successfully compete against others. AThe market is too fragmented and each airline separately can only grow so much.

Only now are we finding out how murky these guys are.

adria is becoming the star story of 2018.
unfortunately, this is the reality of airline business. not this enthusiastic armchair comments "more planes, more routes, more everything". airlines business is very often an unprofitable one.

the funny thing is that we are here talking about few millions, while JU is losing tens of millions each year, but there is government to cover those loses.

That's not an option, because now they need real cash, not an accounting manouvre which was the last 'capital injection', where one of the 4K companies 'bought' JP's brand for a couple of millions, but the money was never paid, it was just noted in the accounting books as capital inflow.

Guys, I think it's too early to write Adria off

10:18

JP is used by public sector employees and big companies from private sector - ordinary Slovenians go to Trieste, Venice, Zagreb etc. Tourist come to Ljubljana with Transavia, Eurowings or by bus (Chinese). So, yes, JP has no special strategic importance to Slovenia that cannot be offered by Eurowings, RYR, AU etc.

Today's cancelled flights

Ljubljana - Paris
Ljubljana - Warsaw
Ljubljana - Pristina

Yes, it is still owned by Adria.

and please stop with this wet dream that LH cares even a bit about the 5 saabs of Adria

Actually both. But cancellations are done by JP itself, while rumors are made by maleficient individuals.

I'm from Slovenia and I agree at 100% with posts from 24 October 2018 at 09:19 and 24 October 2018 at 10:25. Public sector employees don't use regular JP for flights if they need to pay from own pockets. If it's paid for them they don't care.

to sto ti ovdje tvrdis, nije istina
80% putnika kod adrie airways su slovenci

10:25 & 10:44

Right. I see your point, although I still don't know where you're getting your data from.

What I think, is that Adria could re-structure their management and business model, to attract different types of travelers. Then it would suddenly become very important. Although, it already is, as you've clearly pointed out that it serves big companies.

Hamburg already cancelled for tomorrow.

+1

I notice that Saab flights are cancelled regularly.

Maybe they could sell it and that way get capital. Chinese carriers are very interested in these flight schools around Europe.

There fares have stabilised. They are not expensive as they used to be, although they certainly are expensive in terms of the value you get for your money.

Not to mention that, if Adria goes bust. You can forget about most of the Balkan destinations, probably forever or with a very reduced frequency. And Balkan, like it or not, is rather strategically important for Slovenia.

Especially since there is a high probability your flight will be cancelled.

This is very serious. I doubt 4k will get away with it.

The Slovenian government should have done a better job when selecting Adria's future partner.

Never trust non-aviation funds investing into airlines. It has never worked out.

They haven't been very reliable since they have been with Adria.

They should have. They just wanted to offload JP as quickly as possible because it was on the bring of collapse. Naturally, they could only find someone like 4K.

Anon 09.54

'...once OU and JU are gone.'

I don't know about OU but JU isn't going anywhere any time soon.

No, they paid 4K to take it.

The partner is good the market bad =too small!

I am not that familiar with Zagreb situation so hard to tell for OU.
Once JU subsidies stop and it goes bust, many routes can be substituted by others adding more frequencies as there is already competition (Zurich, Moscow, Frankfurt, Paris, Amsterdam, Rome, London...etc). There would be some problems in connectivity to cities like Thessaloniki, Brussels (half empty anyway) and several German destinations that are currently only served by JU. That would take maybe a whole year to get alternative. Biggest blow would be to regional routes.

@Nemjee
That is true. If European Commission is so lenient towards AlItalia and Italian government, we can expect it to be continuously relaxed in the JU saga as well. JU is to small for any of big players to raise concern and make a case of it.

There will still be LH and JU connections.

@anon 10:18
These governments have no ground to oppose to such a feeder company. All covered by open skies agreements.

Not possible and very sad. Too little market to operate with two hubs (or more), and nationalism prevents people from accepting that Belgrade is the one which should be a hub.

JU is not based on market economy principles, so should not be compared.

Slovenia should just accept the harsh reality that not every country nowadays can have a national carrier. It is job of the government to secure connectivity at affordable prices. National carriers are thing of the past and sooner Balkan little states realise that...

Exactly and given the fact that Serbia won't be entering the EU any time soon it makes even less sense to pay attention to what the EC says related to JU.
People said Cyprus would be better off without Cyprus Airways and how things would be better yet not much has changed besides Cobalt going bust and TUS joining it soon.

It is true that market is small, major eu cities are reachable with cars and crotian shore is a few hours drive away, but to claim that 4k are not clowns is wrong

They managed to cancel the inaugural flight. Irony :)

lol seriously? ://

Cyprus is unique case in Europe. It is so far away from mainland, geographically not even being in Europe. As it is allowed to subsidize routes across the continent to secure "territorial continuity" and connectivity to people living in Italian and Greek islands, it would make sense to basically subsidize any European route to Cyprus during winter season and tickets to Cyprus residents even during summer.

One day JU will also be based on that like Jat Airways was.

@anon 11:46
Any EU airline can fly between EU and ex-yu but no EU airline without special approval is allowed to fly for example BEG-SJJ, SKP-TGD, TGD-BEG, SKP-SJJ etc

Even if JP is the subject today haters can't avoid JU.
I wonder where you were when "Udruzeno oglasavanje" from Croatia was providing cash to foreign airlines to open direct routes to Croatia or where you were when EU was giving cash to OU for navigation update on Q400.

Let's not mention the money OU received from Croatian Government right before Croatia entered EU.

Like it or not, as Serbia is still not in EU this kind of Goverment support IS LEGAL.

I know it is hard, but you need to live with it.

Actually, the only routes Cyprus is allowed to subsidize are those that are operated by Cypriot based aircraft (registration 5B) whose flight is made longer because of Turkey. That includes pretty much any destination north of Athens and Italy.

The European Commission did subsidize Ryanair flights from Paphos during winter time in order to stimulate winter tourism. Seems like it worked as Paphos has become a year-round destination.

For example, Cobalt's Moscow flights used to last 45 minutes longer compared to Aeroflot as they had to go all the way around Turkey.

I don't think anyone receives subsidies at this point besides CY which has flights to PRG and LED which are not allowed to overfly Turkey.

If Adria did go under by lets say Christmas, well it could solve OU seasonality problem for a few months at least and OU could easily takeover a share of the Slovenian market but judging by the way OU has been managed I doubt they would know how to take advantage of a golden opportunity if it presented itself.

Anyone who works or has some knowledge of the finance sector know exactly what 4K are. Their goal is to buy run down companies as cheap as possible, take a few years to make them look as good as possible then resell them at a huge profit. Its basically a 'flip it' model and borders on being illegal but they are usually savvy operators and know how to get around legal loopholes.
I made similar comments when Adria was first sold to 4K and why whenever it was brought up I argued against OU being sold to them for this reason.

So i doubt Lufthansa was ever behind 4K (otherwise they wouldn't be in this situation). I just think that 4K with limited knowledge in the aviation field thought they saw an awesome opportunity to make a quick buck but instead found out the hard way how much of a capital killer the aviation industry really is.

This i fear will be the end of them unless it comes sooner.

I honestly don't care if they go bankrupt or not. We (Slovenian taxpayers) are not paying for them anymore.

They should at the very least have a plan to move to Ljubljana in case the worst happened. If managed properly (managed being the key word) it could be done smoothly, reasonably successfully and could turn into a huge coup for OU. I'm sure it has crossed someones mind over at OU and the idea has gone right to the too hard or this is what others (further north) do not us basket.

And even as today’s topic is about JP, you couldn’t help but mention OU. ;)

No one is hating, people simply noted differences and similarities between JP and JU business environments.

I wonder why he did not mention YM, there are also interesting differencies between JP and YM.

Also we can find many differenices between OU and JP, but no one mentioned them.

It is important JU to be the target.

of course i will mention JU, because here we are speaking about loss of few milions that will lead one company to bankruptcy, while the JU is burning tens of millions of taxpayer money (yeah, i do pay substantial taxes, before we go into more stupider argument by JU fanboys).


JP situation is what happens when company is not profitable - its demise is unavoidable
JU situation is very much out of this world.

Air France-KLM made a loss of over 200 million euros last year. French government has a stake in the company.

Adria was struggling to survive even when it received millions from the govetnment Petar. Your comment is quite amateurish.

@ 14:45

So? EU has a two tier system, my friend - and we, exyu, are not on the 'fast train'.

Petar celik, how much money did Montenegro Airlines receive last year from the government?

Adria's problems are not purely financial. Cancelling 100 flights in 2 months was not because of finances but because of extremely poor planning and management. But it will lead to even worse finances.

Currently not that you are not paying, you get payements in the budget. But if it go bust you will start to pay for all unemployed people..and therewill be a lot of them. Not just from adria but also from other companies. 500 only from Adria. It willcost you a lot.

@14:51

Well, the problems are purely financial. The wages in JP are low compared to the foreign carriers and there are no others margins you could cut in order to save some cash. So in a sense, JP is a company that cannot be profitable in this day and age.

But 4K never had any serious intentions - they waged a PR assault for the past year in order to get a naive buyer to buy JP, and now they are going to close down the company (and thus our government is saved from bad PR this would bring if they had to do it).

True that some people will unfortunately lose jobs. But on the other side, economy in Slovenia is still growing and for most people shouldn't be a problem to find another job. Of course it would be better if Adria somehow manages to survive, though I doubt that this is actully possible in a long term...

Heheh it would be better to ask how much money did YM burn per plane?

I suppose Mr. Petar "Expert" will be able to answer as he did not answer anything about OU

4K will sure not loose their money. There is no economic sense to buy the company, fill extra money and then leave it to go bancrputcy.
Owner will capitalise Adria, that's for sure.

@15:26

Didn't you read the siol.net article? 4K already made tonnes of money with JP - they cashed out its base capital, signed a couple of fictitious contracts for 'consulting', robbed Darwin and voila. They didn't put one euro in the compnay.

Which is why the only thing the pay regulary is maintenance and staff salaries (to avoid immediate strike) - everything else is paid via I.O.U's. And when one of the fuel providers says 'no mas', it's game over. And I predict this will happen in the coming days, or at most a week or two.

Agree. Both are not good. I'm sure that every time story like this shows up they can notice significant dip in their forward bookings.

Rumours? Copy of the letter from CAA was published by media, seeing as how they have no capital reserves left (as they have sold brand, etc.) and given than according to their financial report the loss due to oil prices in 2017 was 4 mio EUR (at an average cost of 50USD), and statement by CEO they can’t make profit with current oil price (80 USD).

How is it then fake news that they need fresh capital? Loss, loss and more loss... You can’t just keep loosing money, unless somebody pays for it. Don’t see 4K paying anything else into this project unfortunately.

Yes, so instead of 5 mio EUR loss they can make 50. Good old times.

I personally don't think that any type of cooperation will ever help them. Having one airline like in the old days, probably even less. The fact is that air travel has long become commodity. Cost of training, security, planes, fuel went up significantly and fares didn't follow. This is extremely low margin business. Competition is huge and only big players, running big hubs and major LCCs will survive. 5 years ago O'Leary said that there is a room only for 5 players (4 traditional and one LCC) in Europe. I didn't believe it back then but more and more this is becoming true. Balkan in general is too fragmented of a market. One big hub could maybe exist with every other city feeding into it but even that is questionable.

Honastly, if all of the four ex-Yu airlines were privatly owned based on market principles, they would all be gone by now, their profitable lines covered by big players and no trafic between BEG and SJJ for example.

It’s the free market that favours larger companies, have a look at “economies of scale” on the internet.

You need a lot of fixed items to start an airline (operational manuasls, booking system/website, etc.), and a lot of these costs don’t really increase with number of aircraft. So an airline with 1 aircraft will have much much larger proportion of its costs fixed as opposed to an airline with 100 aircraft.

So don’t come here with “it’s not fair”. Every EU airline can fly from/to anywhere in the EU. Saying that the market is small is BS, it’s just the limitation in people’s heads.

There is nothing stopping OU or JP to start running domestic Spanish routes, or flying winter charters from Scandinavian to Ibiza, Palma or Canaries.

This will never happen because in this f*-up part of Europe people still hold grudges from WW2, let alone the recent Balkan wars.

And even if it did, Serbia, Montenegro, Kosovo and Macedonia would have to be EU members (preferebly Schhengen as well) first, otherwise it would be a logistical nightmare and far from cost efficient.

Competent people will have new jobs in matter of weeks, especially cabin crew and pilots given the current aviation job markets.

Paperweight substitutes on the other hand...

The companies you talk about used generous help from their respective owners (governments) at the time to reach that scale. When they did, new rules kicked in that disallow such help so that small airlines like JP or OU can never get even close. That's what is not fair in my mind.

Seems they simply have no pilots for them.

Ryanair got subsidies from Irish government, easyJet from UK, ...?

idnas24 October 2018 at 13:53

Your comment is very shortsighted. If JP goes bust, not only there will be cca. 500 freshly unemployed people, but also:
- less personal income tax and all social security contribution would not be collected by the state, but paid out instead to these uneployed;
- less consumption, less VAT collected;
- all JP subcontractors/suppliers would be out of business;
- LJU airport would loose considerable part of direct income from passangers flying with JP until they are substituted by other carriers. How long would it take to reach today's numbers with presumably very limited network MUC, ZRH, VIE, FRA, ... ?
- LJU subcontractors/suppliers would loose income;
- much less incoming guests from diminished network, the whole tourism sector in Slovenia looses income (hotels, transport, tourist agencies, restaurants), thus state collects less indirect taxes from this consumption
- final effect is, that economic activity would be much lower with JP going bust, than with JP flying.

All above arguments were valid also at the time, when JP was state owned and this was IMHO the main reason for all past subsidies and other staste help ...

Most logical thing is JU to take over the market

how do they select the destinations that are cancelled? Those markets are pretty rich...Paris Hamburg Warsaw

Stop with the drama. All subcontractors would go out of business? Petrol, Eurocontrol, Adria Tehnika, LH Systems, ...? It’s much more likely they will go out of business if they don’t start collecting Adria’s dues.

This sort of rhetoric has led naive politicians years ago to sink (yes, sink) tens of millions of EUR of hard-earned taxpayer money into the Adria Airways blackhole. Average people and people with minimum income had to pay a lot of money so highly paid Adria employees could continue to work there.

Bigger airlines have collapsed before and the world is still turning around. And even after Adria is history, it will continue to do so, believe it or not.

@Nemjee
Interesting, I did not know that. However, I am referring to something additional and aimed at residents of the island. The country is really gravely isolated from the rest of the EU.

@anon 12:57
Of course not. I did not mentioned that either in my post about having regional feeder company or my 11:46 post. It is all about linking Munich with Balkan airports.

Well at least you can have 10+ bus departures from Ljubljana directly to Zagreb airport.

@anon 13:13
Aid to JU is not completely legal as there are prohibitions arising from Stabilisation and Association Agreement with the EU. Serbia is obliged to adhere to EU state aid rules. JU was just lucky enough till now that there was no serious pressure from the European Commission.

Non EU company to open new airline in Slovenia? :)

Believe me even ZAG will never become a hub, it is just too small of a player around even if it has a new brand terminal.

No problem. Like IAG just did it.

Adria CEO just disclosed on national TV that 4K will invest at least further 10mio EUR in Adria to keep it alive.

So we can expect more from Adria in coming months. :)

In what case? You are referring to AirItaly?

More cancellations for sure.

Did he also disclose where will those 10m come from?

I cant decide what impression he gave me? I cant say he impressed me with his “confidence”. Im not sure he believes
His own words. Not a very plausible interview. Problems are huge as he re(confirmed): 1. That the loose this yr WONT be INSIGNIFICANT (repeated 2x), 2. Cancellations and delays wont be resolved at least till the beginning of decembre. after this interview I AM SERIOUSLY AFRAID that the situation must be VERY CRITICAL, coz he tried hard (but cant say he was successful) to calm down the public, the suppliers and the authorities.

It's a scam. If you lead a serious company you do not pull a rabbit out of a hat (10 million euro joke) on national TV. I think it's clear they are going to be grounded in the very near future (fuel providers or strike) and they are trying to avoid it with this BS.

Of course it is legal as EU approved it.

Get informed

http://balkans.aljazeera.net/vijesti/avijacija-u-regiji-svi-u-zraku-samo-bih-prikovana-za-zemlju

Why would he? It is a private company.. When you go buy a loaf of bread, do you disclose where you got the money to be able to buy a loaf of bread?