Jet Time (2006) (Copenhagen Kastrup) has filed for bankruptcy at the Maritime and Commercial Court in Copenhagen. However, owner Lars Thuesen has told the Danish travel news site Check-in that some of its assets will be reconstituted into a new company.
The ACMI/charter specialist had expected to fly 350,000 Scandinavians south this summer on its fully leased fleet of two B737-700s and five B737-800s, with a workforce of around 400 employees, but covid-19 ended these plans.
“From one day to the next, we lost all of our earnings base without knowing when we could start flying again. It is a very strange situation to be in charge of a private company that 'de facto' has been banned from doing business,” CEO Jørgen Holme said in a statement on July 21.
On June 25, Jet Time sacked 313 of its 342 Danish staff, effectively putting the company to sleep, and repatriated most of its 57 employees at Finnish subsidiary Jet Time Finland (Helsinki Vantaa).
As previously reported, Birthe Madsen, the carrier's director of business development, revealed earlier this month that the company hoped to resume operations in October with two B737-800s while negotiating contracts with tour operators. But it became clear that it would no longer be able to continue with its current cost structure and loss of DKK800 million kroner (USD124 million) in high-season revenue.
However, Thuesen, who recently reduced his stake in airBaltic (BT, Riga) from 20% to 9%, told Check-in that at the start of June he had established a new Danish company, Jettime a/s, for which Denmark's civil aviation authority (Trafikstyrelsen) had subsequently approved an Air Operator's Certificate (AOC) under licence number DK.AOC.085 (against Jet Time A/S which has licence number DK.AOC.060).
The new company will employ a team of 26 former Jet Time employees with Holme at the helm, who will build a new airline as travel restrictions disappear in a post-covid world, Thuesen said. Jettime will retain five aircraft for operations, with a target fleet of up to ten aircraft by summer 2021.
Jet Time's aircraft are currently in storage, the ch-aviation fleets module shows. On July 16, Kemble (Cotswold Airport)-based MRO provider GCAM posted an image of an aircraft in Jet Time livery with the message: “The weather's dull here in the #Cotswolds, but things have brightened up with the arrival of this B737(NG)! GCAM is handling the acceptance and storage of the aircraft for a leading global investment company.”
According to Flightradar24 ADS-B data, B737-700 OH-JTZ (msn 29083), Jet Time Finland's only aircraft, flew from Billund to Kemble on July 15, where it remains. Jet Time did not respond to ch-aviation's question as to the fate of the jet.
