"Croatia Airlines" on the verge of collapse: They cancel flights every day, the staff is leaving, and the director is nowhere to be found

By selling London landing rights (slots) and assets, the company was left with no substance and resources needed to get out of the crisis

The Croatian Union of Air Pilots announced on Sunday that they sent a second open letter to the Prime Minister of the Republic of Croatia in which they again warned him about the alleged, alarming situation in the company and the "debacle" with the election of a new director. 

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They remind in the statement that they sent an appeal to the Prime Minister in January, and they met a transport minister on February 14th on the issues of "Croatia Airlines".

- Then we warned of an alarming situation in the company and expressed concern that the entire system of "Croatia Airlines" will collapse. Unfortunately, it turned out we were right. The company was on the verge of collapse, and the season already started - according to the Croatian Traffic Pilot Union.

The reason for this is, as they claim, the unrealistic planning of deadlines for winter maintenance of the aircraft, due to which the flight schedule started without two aircraft, which will have a delay in entering the traffic for a month and a half. That's why, they add, instead of the plane "Dash Q400", they are deploying "Airbus A319 / A320" planes on flights, with 174 seats, instead of those of 76, transported 17 passengers and lost enormous money.

- When the number of flights increased in March, the company could no longer cope with it as before, so it began to hire very expensive planes that would jump into the place of aircraft that were late from repairs. In only 12 days, from March 23 to April 3, we rented 13 aircraft from three different carriers from Eastern Europe. However, the company is having difficulty hiring aircraft, because the available planes on the market in April were already occupied by long-term leases. Because of the inability to rent enough aircraft, "Croatian Airlines" started canceling the flights, including those subsidized by the state. 18 flights were canceled in the last month, which is almost 3 flights a day. There were few days since March that didn't have canceled flights, and there were days that had several canceled flight - they announced from the union.

They claim that half of the mechanics, one-third of the pilots, and a quarter of the stewardess left the company, and the leaving continued in 2018.

By selling London landing rights (slots) and assets, the company was left with no substance and resources needed to get out of the crisis. Taking loans in banks is difficult, with draconian conditions, they noted.

In addition, "Croatia Airlines" has no Management Board for a year and a half. For the third time, the repeated open competition is still inexplicably prolonged, they warned and pointed out that the company's choice of a new director is, in fact, a choice between two options: bankruptcy or possible recovery of the company.

They also pointed out that they had been without a collective contract for 17 months, and that they had canceled the protests twice because the resource minister assured them that the problems would be resolved.

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(Telegraf.co.uk / Hina)