Estonian aviation expert and former Nordica Business Development Manager Sven Kukemelk has become the new Managing Director of Adria Airways. Mr Kukemelk served as the Executive Director for Business Development at the Estonian carrier, later becoming CEO of its affiliate Regional Jet. During his tenure, the company received an IOSA certificate, grew its fleet from six to twelve units and established new ACMI contracts with LOT and SAS Scandinavian Airlines. After leaving the Nordica Group, Mr Kukemelk co-founded the aviation consultancy NA Advisory. The Estonian businessman joined Adria six month ago, serving as the airline's Deputy Chief Commercial Officer and was named as CEO of the Adria Airways Flight School just last month. He has also worked at the Estonian Aviation Academy, airBaltic, Estonian Air, Tallinn Airport and Lufthansa Consulting in the past.
Adria will from now on be led by two Managing Directors, Holger Kowarsch and Sven Kukemelk. Holger Kowarsch will continue to lead the Financial and Commercial divisions and the company's support departments, and Sven Kukemelk will be responsible for managing the Operations division, and will continue to lead the Adria’s Flight School. "The owners believe that with the changed leadership, our company will be more successful in addressing all the issues and challenges that are being raised due to the rapid development in the aviation industry, which all European air carriers in particularl are faced with", Adria said.
 |
| Sven Kukemelk |
Adria Airways assisted in the creation of Nordica following the collapse of Estonian Air. It provided the airline with an Air Operator's Certificate, commercial platform, ticketing system, staff and flight codes. In late 2016, Nordica abruptly ended its cooperation with Adria and forged a new agreement with LOT Polish Airlines. It has never been disclosed how much of a financial incentive Adria received for its partnership with Nordica, which was negotiated by the carrier while it was still in state hands. In its 2015 financial report, the airline's new owners at the time, 4K Invest, hailed the tie-up. Adria is currently wet-leasing a Nordica Bombardier CRJ700 aircraft in order to maintain its schedule without disruption as several of its own jets are undergoing maintenance.
Comments
So more ACMIs for Adria coming up?
Estonians have Nordic mentality so maybe he will do a good job. JP needs to get rid of the Balkan mentality.
Holger Kowarch, 2018-2019
Sven Kukemelk, 2019-present
Of course because currently 4 CRJs are inoperative!
Sven Kukemelk
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.3846/16487788.2017.1415226?needAccess=true
AAR, AAX, AFA and AAL are out of action. As @9.22 rightly mentiones, AAL has not engines.
Nordica provides flight operation services to LOT, which has improved the organisation of regional flights by LOT.
Adrias last days are counted
what is needed is good management and no provincial prejudices
- SCAC deal failure
- Failed expansion from Ljubljana
- Failed base in Paderborn
- Disastrous operations summer 2018
- Massive loss for 2018
As fat as I'm aware
Adria - German, Estonian
Air Serbia - Australian, UK
FlyBosnia - Australian
Best thing would be to start a new low cost side project/airline where people are employed before hand knowing their conditions and then slowly transfer suitable assets ad routs to the new model. This is what most major airlines are doing.
Look at all the LCCs in Europe, everybody flying with exposed metal in the cabin.
A true legacy carrier.
What kind of assets that are free of any debt does Adria even have?
Their routes are not assets and as far as anything else goes... There's nothing left either.
They are not - they owe at least 50 million euros to the contractors. So there are two question for the guys in Petrol in LJU:
- are they considering pulling the plug?
- and if not, what is the financial exposure of those two companies (or any other contractor) with regards to JP? Meaning, if JP goes under, is there a danger of any of the contractors going under as well.
With such managers you only can win big time .
It could be also gain for LOT as all JP would become LO-coded, so LOT would gain presence in exYu, where they are already growing.
Besides working with LOT Adria/Nordica could become important CRJ ACMI provider not working for LOT only but also for SAS and a few others. Then they will gain mass which would allow them cut cost thanks to bigger scale of operations. Small scale of operations is the biggest issue for airlines from small market in CEE. They have no chance to survive on their own.