Eastern Europe’s airlines fall one by one: Financial mismanagement and nationalist hubris
Photo Credit: Wizz Air is doing better than its state-owned peers in the region. Flickr.com / eisenbahner
Skift Take
The collapse of airlines and the inability for old-line European carriers to pick up slack will lead to inroads in the region by Turkish Air, which will only improve the Anatolian carrier's position in Europe.
For Prague-based public relations consultant Joe Cook, just finding a flight may prove to be the toughest part of a business trip to Bulgaria later this month.
With Czech Airlines AS cutting services to Sofia, Cook must travel via Vienna or Munich at twice the time and cost. It’s the same story for journeys around much of eastern Europe as cuts in state spending and a dearth of potential investors among larger carriers forces government-owned operators to downsize networks.
“Flight-related costs have increased and one’s choices are reduced,” said Cook, whose firm, Cook Communications, includes coking-coal producer New World Resources Plc and Swedish arms- maker Saab AB as clients. “You start thinking, ‘Do I really need to go there?’”
Europe’s sovereign debt crisis is weighing on carriers from the Balkans to the Baltic as austerity programs coincide with high fuel prices and a European Union clampdown on aid. At the same time, Air France-KLM Group, Deutsche Lu
