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 several components of the world stranded after all of the sudden having to close down operations amid high-profile bankruptcies.
Earlier within the yr, Ravn Alaska, Air Belgium, and SKS Airways in Malaysia all additionally shut down operations. Bigger names akin to WizzAir and Qantas Airways shut down their branches in Abu Dhabi and Singapore.
On the finish off October, information additionally broke that constitution service Verijet was submitting for Chapter 7 chapter. The Vero Seashore, 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 the sudden from a coronary heart assault on the finish of September.
As first reported by an outlet protecting the personal jet area, the submitting was submitted within the eleventh circuit of the USA Chapter Courtroom for the Southern District of Florida. Opposite to the extra frequent Chapter 11, Chapter 7 chapter signifies that the house owners are usually not 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 several 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 development 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 clients (people and firms that lease personal jet as a part of an hourly or day by day charge for a enterprise mannequin generally utilized by such operators), in addition to extra money owed to plane lessors, insurance coverage firms, and numerous 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 offer the flight companies.” Since Kane’s dying, the service has not been working flights and is unlikely to run them sooner or later, because it’s asking a decide to go straight to liquidation.
