UPDATED at 21.00
Despite the cancelation of all of Jat Airways’ flights tonight, there is still hope that the strike will end in the late evening hours. The government is still, at this moment, talking to both Jat Tehnika and Jat Airways about a possible end to the dispute. Jat Airways says that Jat Tehnika will inccure the biggest loss from this industrial action. The airline says that Jat Tehnika will be obliged to pay up all losses that Jat has incurred due to the strike and said that if Jat Tehnika has no aircraft to service from Jat Airways, the company will go bankrupt.
Jat Tehnika has continued its strike grounding Jat’s entire fleet and leaving thousands of passengers angry and without flights. Jat Airways has done all it can to secure seats on other airlines for the grounded passengers and has also offered hotel accommodation to those passengers that have been delayed by more than 24 hours. Jat’s CEO Srđan Radovanović claims that in the past 48 hours the airline has lost 500.000 Euros and has labelled the behaviour of the technician’s trade union as selfish. Still, a breakthrough is expected to occur on Thursday evening when the government will discuss the current dispute between the two companies. It is speculated that flights could begin on Friday morning and that the airline would normalise its schedule during the weekend. The Serbian government has said that the dispute will be solved by the end of the week. Yesterday the only Jat flights that took off from Belgrade Nikola Tesla Airport were those to Moscow, Hurghada and Sharm-el-Sheikh.
Meanwhile, a delegation from Airbus, with impeccable timing, decided to drop in for a chat with Jat’s CEO. It is believed that alarm bells have gone off at Airbus after Boeing’s recent visit to Serbia. Heading the Airbus delegation is Gregory Desois, Airbus’s sale manager for Eastern Europe and Monique Brepson, EADS vice president. These high ranking officials have come to discuss the airline’s 1998 order for 8 aircraft. The order, which cannot be cancelled, is extremely damaging for Jat. At the time the order was made Jat could not order aircraft from the United Sates (namely from Boeing) due to sanctions. Thus, Airbus decided to significantly inflate its price knowing that Jat had no choice. Jat is hoping it can exchange the order for 8 ATR72-600 aircraft. The two Airbus representatives told Jat’s CEO that they know all about striking technicians, pointing towards their own recent troubles with aircraft engineers in Toulouse.
Updates regarding the strike throughout the day.
Its bad but I'm happy this is happening to JAT. We need a smart airline, just look at what WizzAir is doing, now this is smart http://wizzair.com/promo/JAT_Rescue_Plan/
ReplyDeleteWizz Air are the future for all of the ex-YU region, it's only a matter of time...
ReplyDelete@ Milos
ReplyDeletelol when did this pop up? :p
Last night on TV the JAT director mentioned how 50 milion dinars has been lost on the first day of the strike, which happens to be half the 100 milion dinar debt JAT has towards Jat Tehnika, and now with a second day of stikes...do the math, yet supposedly there isnt any money at the moment to give to Jat Tehnika...sramota
All Jat flights have been cancelled today. Hope the STRIKE will continue!
ReplyDeleteI assure you that Wizz air will not be taking over th exyu market.Although it has taken time i still remain hopeful that Jat will have a fleet renewal in the hopefully not to distant future and takeover the macedonian aviation market.
ReplyDeleteAll the remainder of Jat's flights for today, including Skopje, Malta-Tripoli, Thessoloniki, and Larnaca-Abu Dhabi, have been cancelled...
ReplyDelete@ Namanja - I don't know what you've been smoking/drinking, but it must be very powerful stuff... Your optimism (if one can call 'hoping' that an overpriced airline that charges 300% higher fares than low cost carriers like Wizz will continue to survive stealing money from consumers who don't have any money in the first place) is rather strange.
ReplyDeleteexchange all airbus orders for 8 ATR72s???? LMAO
ReplyDeleteJAT AIRWAYS
ReplyDelete1964-2009 End of Jat
Wizz Air take ower.
This ongoing rubbish about Wizz. I'm willing to say that it is even a bad influence on the atmosphere at this forum..
ReplyDeleteTheir only route so far is LTN-ZAG if im not mistaken.
So come with some real facts before assuring everyone that Wizz is taking over.. As sure you are about that, as unsure am I.
About all the Wizz Air comments, if they were going to do something impressive, they could of done it in Ljubljana where they are free to open flights to, yet they didnt last there. As mentioned, in Croatia theyve only managed to keep the LTN-ZAG route and arent too competative with Croatia Airlines on the Zagreb-London route, with OU at times being cheaper and more convenient to travel with. What people forget to mention is that for Serbian passports to access Budapest and Timisoara there is a need for a thing called the Schengen visa. Wizz Air isnt very convenient in that sense and for the fact that too many of JAT's canceled offered by Wizz Air requires a stop over at some random airports in Sweden or the Netherlands, and the final destination would end up being some remote airport.
ReplyDeleteTo the comments about the change from A319's to ATR's, i hope they can pull that off and manage to get a good deal on a mixture of ATR72's and ATR42's.