Air Comet boss 'Would not have bought a ticket'

Gerardo Díaz Ferrán, the owner of Bankrupt Spanish Airline, has said that he could not understand why the public had continued to buy tickets with his airline.

Ferrán, who is also Chairman of the employers’ organisation - CEOE in Spain and joint owner of the suspended airline Air Comet, has said personally he would never have chosen to fly with Air Comet. When taking workers salaries being unpaid for the last 8 weeks into account, he said he did not understand why passengers had still been buying tickets.

Despite increasing pressure, Ferrán has refused to step down from his position as Chairman of the CEOE, stating that Air Comet is a well-run company, but it has been dragged into closure by a lack of credit and by a court judgment. He went on to say that the business problems that Air Comet was facing had nothing to do with him being Chairman of the CEOE. It was the Supreme Court in London which ordered the airline’s planes be embargoed because of an unpaid debt to a German bank.

He blamed the British court for causing the problem which left 7,000 passengers stranded, mostly in Madrid. They are now being flown home to various South American cities by the Ministry for Development which has chartered four planes for this. The Ministry has also withdrawn Air Comet’s license to fly.