Whereas the beginning of 2025 introduced with it a lot optimism about excessive traveler numbers, the projections didn’t pan out for each airline.
By September, two Scandinavian airways — Play and Braathens Aviation — left vacationers in numerous components of the world stranded after all of a sudden having to close down operations amid high-profile bankruptcies.
Earlier within the 12 months, Ravn Alaska, Air Belgium, and SKS Airways in Malaysia all additionally shut down operations. Bigger names reminiscent of WizzAir and Qantas Airways shut down their branches in Abu Dhabi and Singapore.
On the finish off October, information additionally broke that constitution provider Verijet was submitting for Chapter 7 chapter. The Vero Seaside, Florida-based airline had amassed over $38.7 million in liabilities and confronted a slew of lawsuits when 60-year-old founder Richard Kane died all of a sudden from a coronary heart assault on the finish of September.
As first reported by an outlet masking the personal jet house, the submitting was submitted within the eleventh circuit of america Chapter Courtroom for the Southern District of Florida. Opposite to the extra frequent Chapter 11, Chapter 7 chapter implies that the house owners aren’t seeking to restructure or requesting monetary help however will head straight into liquidation.
With a fleet of single-engine Cirrus SF50 Imaginative and prescient jets, Verijet ran short-haul flights in numerous areas of the U.S.
Associated: Vacationers nonetheless stranded after airline goes bankrupt, cancels flights
In 2023, the airline additionally expanded to the Bahamas and different worldwide locations just like the Dominican Republic, Turks and Caicos, and the Cayman Islands as a part of very fast progress since Kane based Verijet on the peak of the Covid pandemic in 2020.
In 2023, Verijet was recorded because the Thirteenth-largest operator of constitution and fractional flights within the nation. Its $38.7 million in liabilities included over $10.5 million owed to jet card prospects (people and companies that lease personal jet as a part of an hourly or each day price for a enterprise mannequin generally utilized by such operators), in addition to extra money owed to plane lessors, insurance coverage firms, and varied collectors.
In November 2024, buyer Sam Crigman sued Verijet within the Eleventh Judicial Circuit of Miami-Dade County after buying a 50-hour jet card for $147,812 again in March.
The lawsuit claimed there have been “quite a few delays, canceled flights, and numerous excuses for Verijet’s failure to supply the flight providers.” Since Kane’s dying, the provider has not been working flights and is unlikely to run them sooner or later, because it’s asking a choose to go straight to liquidation.