AJET, formerly Helios Airways, yesterday refused to confirm or deny reports that it was moving its base of operation to Britain.
The reports came on the same day that the official conclusions of the report into the August 2005 crash that killed 121 passengers and crew were handed over to the government by Greek investigators.
Earlier, a newspaper said it had information that ajet was moving to the UK. Although it would remain registered in Cyprus, the airline would have no planes based here and no staff.
“Everything you read in the newspapers about our company is mere speculation,” an ajet spokesman briefly told the Cyprus Mail.
However, the spokesman did not deny that moving to the UK was a possibility.
Since Helios changed its name to ajet earlier this year amid a storm of controversy, the airline has maintained a low profile in Cyprus, except when it hit the headlines over various alleged infractions and technical incidents.
Last month, it emerged that ajet and the civil aviation department in Cyprus were in trouble with the European Commission and the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) for not complying with EU air safety standards. It was even said the airline risked being placed on the EU’s blacklist – effectively banning it from operating inside EU airspace.
However, reports yesterday quoted EU officials as saying that ajet had not been placed on a blacklist.
Agence France Presse quoted an EU source yesterday, who said the airline, which mainly operates charter flights to and from Britain, would not be blacklisted.
Despite this, it was clear that even by the August 14 anniversary of the crash, Helios, the pioneer no-frills airline in Cyprus, was finished as far as the Cypriot public was concerned.
The airline dropped its Athens route immediately after the crash, and finally handed back its Heathrow slot in the middle of January this year. It has kept its hard-won slot at Luton, but now deals mainly in charter seats and online bookings for the British market.
The name change became a major issue on the island, where there was a general perception that the airline, owned by the Libra Group, was attempting to avoid its responsibilities towards the families.
Libra, which only bought Helios in late 2004, then changed tack and decided not to go ahead with the notion of a separate company and instead simply change the name of Helios to ajet.
The Helios crash cost Libra at least £5 million plus another £18 million the group wrote off in goodwill as a result of the accident, which resulted in group losses up until the end of October last year of £23.69 million compared to a profit of £2.58 million in the same period in 2004.
Libra has also sought to assure shareholders that the creation of ajet and the reassigning of Helios aircraft to the new charter company would have not affect the group’s financial situation.
