ECA temporarily suspends operations

NEWS FLASH

Croatian-based European Coastal Airlines (ECA), Europe’s only scheduled seaplane service, has temporarily suspended operations after local media reported of the carrier's alleged poor safety practices and maintenance procedures. Following an article published by the popular Croatian web portal "Index.hr", the airline terminated all operations as of today and has suspended bookings on its website over the next four days. In a message published by the "Total Croatia News" portal, ECA CEO, Klaus Dieter Martin, said, "Currently, European Coastal Airlines has paused its flight operations for a few days. This is related to the fact that additional administrative tasks requested by the CCAA (Croatian Civil Aviation Authority) have to be fulfilled. ECA is summarising the requested paperwork in the shortest period of time and is expecting to proceed with flight operations as soon as the middle of next week". The company has accused disgruntled former employees of spreading false information of the airline's safety and maintenance procedures. "Naturally and thankfully, the CCAA has been at an audit and will proceed auditing our efforts. We highly appreciate this, as our utmost priority is the safety of our passengers. For this reason we have for the time being discontinued our flight operations. We are happy to prove our ability to operate safely, reliably and comfortably at competitive pricing, once the last single doubt in regards to the quality of our work has been eliminated", Mr Martin concluded.