Temporary Low Cost Travel Cafe

attitudetravel · Joined: 15 Nov 2007 Posts: 400 Location: London, UK

Scandinavia's best-known low cost carrier, Sterling, has filed for bankruptcy.

See the following reports:

Forbes: Sterling Airways to file for bankruptcy (Associated Press)
International Herald Tribune: Sterling Airways to file for bankruptcy (Associated Press)
The Guardian: Airline Sterling says to file for bankruptcy (Reuters)

attitudetravel · Joined: 15 Nov 2007 Posts: 400 Location: London, UK

Well, well, well....

It seems that Ryanair CEO Michael O'Leary was somewhat premature when he famously predicted "a bloodbath" of low cost airline collapses, back in 2004.

But while he got the timing wrong, his prediction is looking increasingly prescient.

What's most remarkable to me is the size of the operations that are going down. I would have been far less surprised to see smaller European low fare carriers bite the dust as the economy turned sour in the second half of 2008 - airlines such as Manx2 in the UK, Jet4you in Morocco or On Air in Italy - but UK holiday charter / low fare airline XL Airways was a huge operation and Sterling was Scandinavia's largest low fare carrier - comparable in status to easyJet in the UK or Clickair in Spain.