And another one bites the dust... For a long time it looked like airlines in Europe were invincible, with barely any airlines going out of business. Now we've seen a series of airlines in Europe face financial hardships over the past year plus, which was really started by airberlin ceasing operations, though has really gotten…
Continue reading: Germania Ceases Operations Overnight
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Hold on, wait a minute. Don't just drop this on us without some info on what we can do with our Germania reservations. How can we get refunds? Will it be automatic?
I would have said that over the past decade, there has been a large number of European Airlines that are now defunct! From Portugalia to Malev the list is extensive...
If an airline falls in the forest and no one has ever heard of it, does it make a sound?
Too bad! They used to be one of the last true holiday airlines and I had quite a nice flight with them a few month ago - reviewed here https://pennypennypennyblog.com/2018/03/17/when-we-were-young/
@Joe Chivas Unless your ticket was part of an inclusive tour arrangement, I am afraid you won't get a refund. However, Lufthansa, Easyjet and other airlines offer reduced fares for Germania passengers.
I'm not sure if I'm alone here, but is anyone else fairly unsurprised by all this? The sheer volume of airlines going out of business (a lot of which were flying under the radar [puns!] of any sort of real notoriety - @LarryInNYC) seems like the European market was supersaturated and that this was simply a matter of time. Further, a lot of these appear to be fairly small airlines that perhaps came into being when the economy was a boon to potentially risky financial endeavours, like small charter airlines with a limited fleet and limited capital in the event of an economic downturn. But, I'm no airline magnate...
So, what's the next Euro carrier to go bust: Wow Air then Norwegian?
Some of those that we have lost (that I can remember) Air Berlin, Air Lituanica, BMI, Cobalt Air, Estonian Air, Malev, Spanair, Primera air, Portugalia, SkyGreece, Transaero and I'm sure there are others.
Well, I'm sure all the people in Germany and the Middle East (in places like Turkey, Lebanon, Israel; from Beirut alone it flew from 4 or 5 German airports) have heard the sound it's fall made...
Portugalia was bought by TAP Air Portugal and still exists. It flies under the TAP Express brand but if you take one of the Embraer flights, you'll see "operated by Portugalia Airlines".
God their collapse is going to cause GERmania!!!
Are there frequent flyers called Germaniacs?!
I'll stop with the rubbish puns
Just a note: the Swiss subsidiary "Germania Flug AG" is still operating a full schedule as planned...