Futura International Airways - History

History

The airline was established in 1989 by Aer Lingus, Belton Air and Banco Santander, starting operations on 17 February 1990 with a flight from Palma de Mallorca to Manchester. During the 1990s, the airline expanded to cover the whole of Europe, including the Canary Islands in the South and Scandinavia and Iceland in the North, with charter flights, ad-hoc charters, third party short-medium-long term operations (wet-lease) and ACMI. It used to operate, under the leadership of CEO Roman Pané, its own scheduled flights and ad-hoc flights on behalf of various tour operators and airlines in Europe, North and South America, Africa and Southeast Asia. Futura operated from five permanent bases: Palma de Mallorca, Tenerife, Málaga, Gran Canaria and Dublin; as well as various other seasonal bases throughout the year. (Source: ).

The airline was later owned by Corpfin Capital (65%), Aer Lingus (20%) and management and employees (15%). On 16 October 2007, Corpfin Capital and Aer Lingus sold their stakes, during the process of a secondary buyout instigated by the present management team, making way for the participation of the investment fund Hutton Collins, so that the resulting shareholdings were as follows: the Futura Group (management and employees) had 53.5% and Hutton Collins owned 46.5%. The airline had 1,211 employees (at May 2008). It wholly owned cargo subsidiary Flyant (officially Servicios Aéreos Integrales S.A.) and Dublin based Irish charter airlineFutura Gael. In 2008, a few months prior to its demise, in order to reduce the cost base structure, Futura re-launched Flyant as a new passenger carrier with a class-1 AOC, while continuing freighter operations as well under the Flyant name as well. Flyant (passenger carrier) took over some Futura operations, wet leasing a Boeing 737-300 and a 737-400 to Air Algerie, both aircraft and crew being based in Algiers. Futura also set up and operated a successful turn-key airline setting up and management consultancy and offered its services and on the ground aircraft maintenance services as well to several air carriers across continents, one example being Aerolínea Principal in Chile.

The airline abruptly ceased operations at 00:00 on September 8, 2008, due to a lack of cash (with debts of around €50 million). Its AOC was revoked by the Spanish Aviation Authority two weeks later, after the airline was unable to show a viability plan. Since then, its grounded fleet was gradually returned to lessors.

Flyant, which also ceased operations initially alongside parent Futura, later continued on the cargo business, having been sold for the symbolic amount of one Euro, to New Iberital, a Catalan logistics group, which later renamed it Saicus Air. Flyant/Saicus Air continued operating a reduced fleet of a single Boeing 737-300, although eventually this other airline also ceased operations on 14 December 2008???. : An attempt was made to restart passenger operations under Saicus Air using a single MD-83 aircraft, however that also was unsuccessful.