First, we would like to apologize to all Blue Air passengers, which were affected by the impossibility of performing scheduled flights starting at noon on September 6, 2022.
We apologize to all employees and business partners of the Blue Air Aviation Company because we were unable to fulfill all our obligations towards them.
Last but not least, given the fact that from the public announcements issued yesterday, September 8, 2022, we found that we were misunderstood, we want to express our whole self thanks for the help what happened to us agreement in these moments of maximum crisis of National Air Transport Company TAROM SA. as well as by Prime Minister of Romania, but also by Minister of Transport, for repatriation of Blue Air passengers who were stuck outside the country.
In the absence of this support and in the absence of a special human effort of everyone employees of TAROM SA, as well as those from the chancellery Prime Minister, Ministry of Transport and Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the current situation would have been much worse in terms of the number of passengers stuck in airports.
In the last 48 hours the executive management, Board of Directors and Blue Air's shareholding au found the fact that the level of ticket sales was significantly affected, and the amounts that were collected by the payment processors were blocked by them, so that The company does not have at this time of funds needed payment of fuel and other operational expenses, required for flights scheduled from September 12.
Following them, the Company proposes to resume flights starting on October 10, 2022.
In addition, all providers of essential flight services au conditioned providing respective debt payment services. In this context, all aspects regarding the way to resume flight activity as quickly as possible were analyzed, discussing directly with dozens of critical suppliers of the company, namely airports, handling companies, fuel suppliers, traffic control authorities airline as well as with the owner of the aircraft operated by Blue Air.
The decision to resume flights decisively takes into account the possibility of the company to reimburse all affected passengers the amounts owed and to pay all commercial partners the costs of the services rendered in favor of the company.
In this way, we inform all passengers with flights scheduled until October 10, 2022 not to show up at the departure airports, as these flights cannot be operated.
We specify the fact that during the discussions held in The Board of Directors of Blue Air, the representative of the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure requested the resumption of flights as soon as possibleand the vote of the representative of the Ministry of Finance could not be expressed. The vote of the representative of the Ministry of Finance is an extremely important one, considering the fact that this institution issued the Letter of Guarantee for the granting by Eximbank SA of the commercial credit in the amount of 300.775.000 LEI, loan secured by 75% of the Company's shares and other assets owned by Blue Air and the Company's shareholders.
During this period, we firmly believe that the 2 investors with whom the company's shareholding is in extremely advanced discussions at the time when this intervened force majeure situation, they will have the necessary time to analyze absolutely everything the implications of this event and to decide, definitively, if they want to invest the sums necessary to return Blue Air to the figures before the COVID-19 pandemic.
The loss of approximately EUR 130.000.000 generated must be covered
The loss of approximately EUR 130.000.000 due to flight bans, the uncertainty of the many pandemic waves, the absolutely sudden and extraordinary increase in the price of fuel, mainly caused by the war in Ukraine, and the decrease of more than 15% has to be covered of the purchasing power of the EUR against the USD.
We specify the fact that the State aid was strictly dimensioned to cover the losses suffered by Blue Air during the suspension of flights, as a result of the declaration of the state of emergency in the period March-June 2020 and the limited cash deficit of the Company on the 31 December 2020, given that the pandemic has deeply affected the company's revenues in the period 2020-2021.
In the shortest possible time we will return with details about the way in which the activity of air passenger transport will be resumed by the company Blue Air Aviation.