On 4 March 2014, I wrote the first information about Fly Romania, a new Romanian brand in the local aviation industry. It promised a lot, the plans were great, and the rates very good, even doubtfully attractive. For domestic routes, the tariffs were unique, respectively 69.90 EUR / segment for Bucharest-Timisoara and 49.90 EUR / segment for Bucharest-Tulcea, while the tariffs for international routes started from 29.90 EUR / segment.
On 11 March 2014, at a press conference, Ten Airways has officially launched the Fly Romania brand. From the company, they took the floor: Cătălin Buţu, CEO of Ten Airways; Forget Tender, a majority shareholder of Ten Airways and Roxana Badea, PR Manager.
Fly Romania the operation of domestic and international flights began in mid-May. Initially, the rumors announced as the starting date of April 18, when the Tulcea - Milan (Bergamo) and scheduled routes were scheduled. Bucharest - Tulcea.
And after opening all the promised routes, Fly Romania started canceling flights. During the period 1-15 June 2014, several flights were canceled for commercial reasons. After June 15, the matter became more and more complicated and the cancellations continued, and the passengers started to be re-routed, others received the money back, but after a long waiting period, etc. But not everyone was so lucky. The complaints on the Facebook page did not contain, including to the competent authorities.
In the beginning, Ovidiu Tender came out in front and was very associated with the Fly Romania brand, and now he denies it.
After a period of silence (the calm before the storm), during which time no one communicated on behalf of Fly Romania, Ovidiu Tender, a majority shareholder of Ten Airways, began to deny its connection with the Fly Romania brand. During this day, Tender announced the cessation of collaboration with Fly Romania (Mediafax), which owes 400.000 euros to Ten Airways, and comes with a story we don't believe.
"The only shareholder in the company is Cătălin Buţu. The problem has been to become shareholders if things go well. At one point, after a month or two, we found out that we have a lot of money to collect from Fly Romania. That's when things started to change. I asked why he does not pay these sums. I advised him to resign from my company, because I can't agree to create a tick next to Ten Airways. He left with the company that operated Fly Romania, which is no longer based in our country ", Tender declared for Mediafax.
According to the data available at the Trade Register, the company Necessair Consulting SRL, which operates Fly Romania flights, is wholly owned by Cătălin Adrian Buţu, former CEO of Ten Airways (a company belonging to the businessman Ovidiu Tender). Probably due to the bankruptcy of Necessair Consulting SRL, Ten Airways will seek to recover its so-called debt from 400 000 EUR and look so Fly Romania will disappear from the market as quickly as it appeared.
According to a press release issued by Fly Romania, the number of passengers who purchased air tickets is approximately 9400. The number of passengers transported by Fly Romania is 1290, and the number of passengers on other companies is approximately 3500. The number of Fly Romania passengers to receive their money back is approximately 3500. It remains to be seen if even many of them will get the money back.
Below is the official statement sent by Fly Romania:
Fly Romania apologizes to the passengers affected by the cancellation of the flights and offers details regarding the measures taken to resolve the situation.
Fly Romania apologizes to all the passengers who bought tickets for the inconveniences brought by the modification, respectively the cancellation of the flights of the last period. The company also states that all these changes were caused by operational reasons, independent of the will of the company and despite the efforts made in a sustained way.
In these circumstances, Fly Romania makes known the following:
- the reason for canceling the flights is operational, the payment processor blocked the payments to Fly Romania, without notice, motivating an unjustified risk assessment based on the degree of load of the flights. The lack of funds led to the impossibility of operating the flights, generating an immediate decrease in passenger confidence and respectively the cessation of sales.- Additionally, an undersizing of the marketing budget and an aggressive campaign of competition, contributed to the decrease of sales.
- all passengers affected by the cancellation of flights under the legal term of 14 days were re-routed on available Fly Romania flights or on flights operated by other companies and / or received the money back for the purchased tickets, according to the European regulations in force.
- the process of reimbursing the value of tickets for non-performing flights is ongoing and all passengers will receive their money back as the online payment processor will issue them after checking the bank details of used cards. We mention that delays in reimbursement are due to procedures different parts of the processor that audits monthly receipts.
- Fly Romania Bucharest-Antalya flights were not interrupted and are operated in partnership with Air Bucharest, under the same transport conditions.
- in the following days there will be a meeting with the representatives of the payment processor to unblock the related amounts.
- the number of passengers who purchased Fly Romania tickets is approximately 9400 (on average a regular flight operator in Romania carries approximately 6000 passengers / day).
- the number of passengers transported by Fly Romania is 1290
- the number of Fly Romania passengers rerouted on other companies is approximately 3500
- the number of Fly Romania passengers to be reimbursed is approximately 3500
- the number of Fly Romania passengers fully or partially reimbursed is 1.110
- the finding of a transport solution for the passengers from the next period is further analyzed
We continue our efforts to solve the problems that have arisen and express our optimism regarding the resolution of the situation as quickly as possible and the resumption of the normal flight program.
In our opinion, things were premeditated. Initially I believed in this brand, we were really excited about the announced routes and fares, especially the routes to and from Tulcea. But we quickly returned to the first canceled flights. I didn't expect it to happen so quickly.
I would have liked to be a successful business, Tulcea (the area itself, not necessarily the airport) has enormous potential.
I was skeptical at first, I did not express my doubts in the hope that I was wrong and that something very strong would be born, but it seems that
I hope that another airline will introduce flights from / to Tulcea, at least seasonally during the summer and I hope there will be several charter flights (with tourists, foreigners preferred) landing in the Delta. It is one of the areas that can be greatly developed and has an extraordinary advantage, a relatively close airport.
Totally agree! The area has potential… Let's hope that there will be more flights from / to Tulcea with the modernization of the runways, runway, beacons, etc. The airport looks very good.