The head of Flair Airlines is accusing one of Canada’s two major airlines of attempting to kneecap the discount carrier’s operations by trying to lease four planes that were recently seized from it due to overdue payments.
“While I’m not going to name names or cite evidence, I believe that there is much more to this picture than the surface that you see.” The four planes were “only a few days in arrears” with about $1 million owing, “which is about half of one day’s sales for us,” Jones told reporters. “The behaviours to date would say that it would be a tough road to see them back down. This sort of precipitous hedge-fund behaviour makes negotiations tough,” he said, expressing doubt about retrieving the locked-up jetliners from Airborne Capital.