PASSENGERS were yesterday caught in the middle of a game of chicken between ajet and the government, after a plane was grounded at Larnaca airport.
The flight to Gatwick was scheduled for 4pm, but on the orders of the airport chief a maintenance vehicle was deployed on the runway to block the jet.
Some 200 passengers were left waiting on the plane. Once they realised that the flight wasn’t happening, they disembarked and headed for the airport’s departure lounge, frantically searching for airline officials to explain the situation. There were no ajet staff to be seen.
Tempers flared when the frustrated passengers, stranded at the departure lounge for hours without any cash or food, got into a verbal altercation with airport security.
Calm was eventually restored as the travellers were transferred to a Eurocypria flight later in the night.
An earlier flight with ajet had also been cancelled, but due to technical reasons.
Transport Minister Harris Thrassou told CyBC television that he had instructed airport officials to prevent the afternoon plane from taking off.
He said that, earlier in the day, the airline had informed Civil Aviation that it was ceasing its flight operations forthwith.
“As such, we had no other choice but to ground the plane,” Thrasou said.
Earlier in the week, the company announced it was terminating all operations inside the next three months due to accrued financial difficulties in the aftermath of last summer’s crash.
In this light, Thrassou described ajet’s move yesterday as being completely out of the blue.
“We can’t put up with the company’s wavering any longer. They have forced our hand,” he said.
But ajet, which called the blocking of their aircraft a “commando raid”, had a very different take.
Company sources told the Mail yesterday that ajet was in fact ceasing operations, but this was because of a disagreement over taxes owed to the government.
The government demanded that ajet pay all its arrears immediately, something the company turned down.
The same sources said they had reassured the government they would pay up, but needed more time – the three-month deadline mentioned above.
But the government refused, blackmailing the airline that it would stop its planes from flying unless it received the taxes owed, the company sources claimed. In response, ajet said it had no other option but to halt operations.
Some strong language was exchanged over the phones, the Mail has learned.
With neither side willing to back down, the government made good on its threat, blocking the plane on the runway, the sources said.
Bookings with ajet are to be re-directed to charter airlines.
Last month reports surfaced that ajet, formerly known as Helios, was moving its base of operation to Britain.
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 had kept its hard-won slot at Luton, but dealt mainly in charter seats and online bookings for the British market.
The crash cost airline owners 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.
