Second Airline Collapses

Less than a week after British Airline, Flyglobespan, Collapsed - a British judge has ordered that a Spanish Airline, Comet, should be closed down. The judge in the Supreme Court in London has ordered that all ticket sales should be stopped and has immobilised the company’s planes, after being presented with a claim by the German Nord Bank, which is owed 17.2 million €.

1,500 passengers are currently stranded in Madrid’s Barajas airport, many of them destined to fly on to South America. Flights to Lima in Peru have already been cancelled with further flights Guayaquil in Colombia and La Habana in Cuba this afternoon also expected to be cancelled.

Comet released a statement that it is ‘in permanent contact’ with Civil Aviation to assist the passengers who have a ticket with the airline. They will now apply for bankruptcy protection and an ERE employment application to lay off their workforce of 650.

Concern was first expressed 8 months ago when many of Comet’s employees were owed back wages. Workers hope that Civil Aviation will now take care of the payment of wages until the 7th January, so that flights should be able to resume very soon.

Air Comet said in a statement that it was looking for solutions to guarantee the viability of the company, and a ‘crisis cabinet’ would be meeting in the capital as soon as possible to work towards that end.

>The Spanish Development Ministry has already requested that they are ‘immediately presented with concrete plans’ and has informed the airline of its obligation to attend to customers who could be affected by the decision.

The helpline providing Information for those affected is - 91 597 83 21