Belgian charter airline goes belly up

Brussels’s trade courthouse ruled Monday that Belgium’s charter flight company Sobelair had definitely gone bankrupt. The air carrier had been struggling for months to stay afloat, judicial sources pointed out.

The Belgian airline was an affiliate of Sabena, a company that met a similar fate in late 2001. After filing for bankruptcy, Sobelair cancelled its four daily flights to Mexico’s Cancun, Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic, plus Alicante and Las Palmas in Spain, sources close to the front office indicated.

The European company was also operating charter flights to Cuba and the Netherlands Antilles, plus other seventy destinations in Europe, the Mediterranean and Africa.

With a fleet of a dozen aircraft, Sobelair had a payroll of 480 employees and 65 percent of its business operations were run through Belgian tour company Jetair, owned by Germany-based TUI. The German tour operator has shown as-a-matter-of-factly interest in buying out a part of Sobelair.