Cirrus Airlines suspends operations

Cirrus Airlines MD Schultheis stated the carrier suspended operations on 20-Jan-2012 until further notice due to economic and market conditions. According to dpa and Handelsblatt reports, the Saarbrücken-based carrier is now in talks on the future of the company. The carrier will continue to pay its around 300 employees. The carrier, established in 1995, operated seven scheduled services within Germany and to Austria and Switzerland at the time of its suspension. Its fleet currently consists of seven aircraft. The carrier handled 200,000 passengers in 2011. 

You may also be interested in the following articles...

• Bankruptcy of Denmark’s Cimber Sterling will leave no long-lasting network gaps
  08-May-2012

  Several airlines have moved quickly to fill the void left by the grounding last week of Cimber Sterling, although not one specific carrier will make major inroads. The LCC/regional operator accounted for only about 8% of seat capacity in its Danish home market and the market is highly fragmented. SAS is the largest carrier in Denmark and provided about one third of total seat capacity prior to Cimber Sterling’s bankruptcy while Norwegian Air Shuttle is the country’s second largest airline, with about a 14% share of capacity (seats), according to data from Innovata.  

  Copenhagen Kastrup Airport is Norwegian’s third largest base in terms of weekly seat capacity after Oslo and Stockholm Arlanda. It was the first airline to take the plunge and open a base at Copenhagen when Sterling went bankrupt in 2008. Cimber Sterling’s failure will create opportunities for Norwegian to further build its Copenhagen base with additional Boeing 737s and increased frequencies on routes on which it competed with Cimber Sterling such as Barcelona, Malaga, Nice, Prague and Rome Fiumicino. Even before the grounding of Cimber Sterling, Norwegian had planned to base more aircraft at Copenhagen as of Jun-2012.

• Integration headaches trigger 1Q loss at United as its revenue performance lags the industry
  27-Apr-2012

  Persistently high fuel costs and challenges in a passenger system information technology cutover pushed United Airlines into a loss for 1Q2012 as its unit revenues lagged behind US legacy peers. Forecasts for the month of Apr-2012 show the lacklustre revenue performance continuing before heading into May-2012 when comparisons become increasingly difficult due to numerous fare increases pushed through in 2011. Despite the weak performance relative to the rest of the US airline industry, United remains confident it is taking the right steps through its merger with Continental Airlines to remain competitive over the long term. But for the moment the carrier is not disclosing a timetable of when it might close the unit revenue gap with its industry peers.

  Special charges related to the passenger service system cutover in March and other integration expenses pushed United to a 1Q USD448 million loss compared with a loss of USD213 million the year prior. The cutover was the final step in combining United and Continental, and now that it is complete the Continental name has been retired.