Azernews.Az

By Mushvig Mehdiyev

Armenia's national air carrier Air Armenia has suspended its flights after months of financial difficulties, promising to resume its work in winter.

The company faced problems after sending its two aircrafts for technical maintenance service to the Netherlands. So it had to offer services with only one aircraft.

There were also other problems resulted from the works by certain ticket sale agents who kept the proceeds as a guarantee for refunding the tickets.

The proceeds in Armenia dropped to a critical minimum and now it is impossible to carry out passenger transportation. The airline's administration has decided to restructure the organization's financial policy through strict measures and reform the flight schedule by December 20.

Air Armenia's Head Arsen Avetisyan earlier said Russian Rosaeronavigation Company's statement published on September 11 threatened to restrict the air carrier's flights to Russian cities from September 21 and it had subsequently caused great damage to the Armenian company.

"The statement sparked great panic among passengers, creditors and debtors. Many passengers began to return their purchased tickets. A large number of customers refused to use Armenian air carrier's services. Meanwhile, sales fell by 60 percent," the company said.

It added that at the same time all creditors began to demand the debts to be paid, refusing to apply the schedule agreed earlier.

Air Armenia has around $405,000 overdue debt to Rosaeronavigation. It currently owes the Russian company about $700,000.

Poor performance, inaccurate flights and lack of necessary clientile are the major factors paralyzing the airline's operation.

Air Armenia has recently delayed flights from Yerevan to Russian Krasnodar city for three times in a row and caused problems for the passengers who had reserved earlier the flight. The company failed to compensate passengers for the delay and ensuing costs saying it didn't have enough cash to indemnify.

Armenia's national air carrier was forced to cancel four flights to Saint Petersburg and two flights to Moscow and Athens earlier on October 6. The massive cancellations came after financial problems with a Dubai-based company. Air Armenia miscarried to pay about $5 million for two airplanes it had purchased from the Arabian aircraft supplier.

Air Armenia replaced the collapsed Armavia Company in 2013 as the latter filed bankruptcy after the years of financial hassle.