Niceair cancels all trips and suspends operations
Niceair has halted their operations due to problems securing an appropriate aircraft. mbl.is/Hafþór Hreiðarsson
Niceair has cancelled all flights as of today. At the time, the company has suspended all its operations.
The managing director of Niceair, Þorvaldur Lúðvík Sigurjónsson, confirms this in a conversation with mbl.is. He says that a decision has not been made on whether the company’s staff will be laid off.
“This could well be solved before the summer. We are not able to keep selling tickets as long as we have not secured an airplane. We have been working day and night to find an airplane in recent days,” he says.
The company is forced to do this because the company’s foreign operator, HiFly, has lost their only aircraft due to HiFly’s default to the airline’s owner. This therefore makes it impossible for Niceair to meet its obligations to their passengers.
The company’s announcement states that despite good results in the past year, strong booking position and good prospects into the year, Niceair is in a position that makes it impossible to provide the services it planned.
“This is a sad outcome in light of the progress made to date and the good prospects, as well as the company’s proper completion of a financing round to ensure its operations are on the way, which has been ongoing since the end of the year. We have been maintaining regular scheduled flights between North Iceland and Copenhagen and Tenerife since June of last year with 71% capacity.
We have already demonstrated that this service is very important and the local market has proven to be stronger and more efficient than hoped. During this period weather has rarely been an issue, but 2% of our flights had some type of anomaly.
The airport at Akureyri did not prove to be a problem in midwinter, and the flights were landed and launched in multicolored warnings during that season. “This is a sad outcome for everyone. We regret the inconvenience caused for our customers,” says Sigurjónsson.
