SkyGreece Appeals to Regulator
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By Dale Smith, www.blacklocks.ca
A grounded Canadian-based airline SkyGreece is pleading for time from federal regulators amid demands it immediately compensate stranded passengers. More than a thousand travellers were left without flights when the Montréal-staffed carrier halted operations last month.
“SkyGreece Airlines has blatantly violated the rights of stranded passengers who continue to suffer as a result of SkyGreece Airlines’ unlawful conduct,” the advocacy group Air Passenger Rights wrote the Canadian Transportation Agency. Advocate Gábor Lukács urged the Agency to enforce regulations compelling the airline to arrange alternative travel for stranded customers and compensate those who paid for future bookings.
“The Agency has all the power it needs to step in,” said Lukács; “What I have done by bringing this application is just putting forward what the Agency should have done on its own.”
Regulators have not commented on the SkyGreece shutdown. The Agency has issued a notice advising customers to call their travel agents. “An airline that says passengers who have been stranded does not represent an urgent matter – I have problems with that,” Lukács said.
An attorney representing the airline wrote in a letter to the Transportation Agency that management requires more time to restructure without facing a speedy regulatory ruling. “SkyGreece appreciates the tremendous impact its operational difficulties have had on passengers,” wrote lawyer Massimo Starnino of Paliare Roland Rosenberg Rothstein LLP of Toronto.
“SkyGreece is in the process of consulting with its stakeholders with a view to restructuring its business and operations in a way that will most benefit passengers and other stakeholders,” Starnino wrote; “No safety concerns have been alleged and there is no compelling argument in favour of an expedited process.”
Passengers were stranded in Canada, Greece and Croatia when the carrier cancelled flights. It had offered service from Montréal and Toronto to Athens, Thessaloniki, Budapest and Zagreb.
Air Passenger Rights also demanded that regulators take steps to ensure SkyGreece’s main corporate asset – a single Boeing 767 parked at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport – is secured to ensure final payment of compensation claims. Attorney Starnino wrote there was no evidence the company “will deal with its assets in a manner that is unfairly prejudicial to its stakeholders, including passengers.”
The airline attributed financial difficulties in part to “Greece’s broader economic crisis,” but did not explain. SkyGreece abruptly cancelled all flights on August 17.
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