Flair apologizes for cancellations after plane seizures, says leasing company in talks with competitor

The CEO of Flair Airlines has urged 4 planes had been seized from his airline as a result of the lessor was in talks with one other airline.

Stephen Jones, CEO of the Edmonton-based low cost airline, held a press convention Tuesday morning, three days after 4 of its leased planes had been seized.

The planes had been seized from airports in Toronto, Edmonton and Waterloo by New York hedge fund firm Airborne Capital.

Jones confirmed Flair owed the corporate $1 million on the leases, however known as the seizure a calculated and strange motion.

“A million dollars, while it’s a lot of money, is less than half one-day sales for us, so it’s not that we were desperately short. We were in communication with them, I was talking to the head of Airborne on Friday, saying, ‘You’ll be paid on Monday,’ and then this happened in the middle of the night on Friday night,” he informed reporters.

Jones stated it is common for airways to make lease funds a number of days late, however added in his 20 years within the trade, he is by no means seen a leasing firm seize planes.

“We think that the seizure of these aircrafts was connected to conversations with another airline,” he stated, however refused to say which airline.

“As a lessor the last thing you want to do is take back aircrafts unexpectedly and be stuck with them, so it’s pretty clear they had somewhere else to put these aircrafts.”

Airborne Capital launched a written assertion concerning Jones’ allegations on Tuesday.

“Airborne Capital strongly rejects the allegations which were made by Flair Airlines in current days in relation to 4 Airborne-managed plane,” the assertion says, including the leases had been terminated after Flair was repeatedly late on its leasing funds for a five-month interval.

“Terminating an aircraft lease is always a last resort, and such a decision is never taken lightly. In this case, following numerous notices to Flair, it again failed to make payments when due and Airborne took steps to terminate the leasing of the aircraft.”

Airborne stated it has authorized obligations to mitigate the losses on the planes, and has taken steps to satisfy these obligations.

The firm stated it will not be talking additional on the matter.

‘VERY SORRY’ TO PASSENGERS IMPACTED

Jones confirmed that slightly below 1,900 passengers had been impacted by the cancellation of 12 flights because of the seizures.

Four of the cancelled flights had been out of Edmonton, with 532 passengers impacted.

He says Flair labored to rebook passengers on new flights, each on Flair or by offering as much as $500 to e-book flights on different airways.

“We’re really sorry for the impact that it’s had on customers,” Jones stated, including Flair resumed regular operations as of Sunday.

“We had three spare aircrafts already in the airline waiting for the summer pickup, so we immediately deployed those, and the full schedule flew on Sunday.”

He says customers will be assured about reserving with Flair sooner or later.

“Customers can be comfortable that they will get there, and not be disrupted by this event.”

Jones says the airline is now present on all its lease funds, together with on the 2 planes it nonetheless leases from Airborne Capital.

“Obviously the relationship is somewhat strained at the moment, but we’ll keep those aircrafts and keep them current.”

He says the airline is working to acquire 4 extra aircrafts to keep up its summer time schedule, which was introduced final week.

“If we don’t get these four back, and it’s looking increasingly unlikely, then we’ll need to either find extra aircrafts for the summer, or trim our capacity and schedule a little.”

“We’ll continue leasing. All the rest of our leasing companies are very supportive.”

He added that fares will not enhance because of the seizures.

“It’s in our interest to keep our fares as low as possible, our aircrafts as full as possible.”

FLAIR’S HISTORY 

Flair launched in 2004 as a constitution airline, and commenced providing repeatedly scheduled service in 2018.

The airline has made a lot of bulletins about route and fleet expansions lately, and goals to be Canada’s third-largest home airline.

In 2022, Flair was investigated by the Canadian Transportation Agency over considerations the corporate didn’t have a majority Canadian possession.

In June 2022, the CTA dominated that Flair was Canadian and will preserve its licence.

With information from CTVNews.ca’s Michael Lee.