Aigle Azur, the French airline which stopped their operations on Friday, received 14 offers to be taken over by investors, or airlines. The deadline was this morning.
While 13,000 passengers are still blocked (out of 19,000) due to the cancellation of all the flights since Saturday, including 11,000 in Algeria only, interested airlines or investors had to put an offer to take over (partially or totally) the defunct airline and 10,000 yearly slots at Paris-Orly.
14 dossiers have been sent to the airline, including 2 main.
- Air France-KLM offer, -9.77% share at stocks, which wants to take over 70% of the jobs at Aigle Azur in France; their project is to integrate Aigle Azur routes into AF network, with an interest for routes to Algeria, Lebanon and Portugal, for €15M, ready to invest further €20M as loan.
- Dubreuil Group offer, the parent company of Air Caraïbes and French bee, has as a project to take over only a few long-haul routes, with only 106 jobs out of 800, and create a new airline, for €15M.
- Lionel Guérin, ex CEO of HOP!, for a symbolic €1, has as a project to take over all the jobs in the air and on the ground, offer supported by Aigle Azur pilots union. American and German investors behind, employees shareholding at €5M.
- LU Azur, led by Gérard Houa, owns 20% share in Aigle Azur, and has as a project to remove all the receivables of the airline, take over 90% of the actual fleet of Aigle Azur and all the jobs excluding A330 operations, approx. 87% of 1,150 jobs at Aigle Azur, and all ground staff in France and Algeria.
- Cyrus Capital Partners, according to newspaper La Tribune ;
- Chronopost, a parcel carrier, same source ;
- Fernand Danan, ex pilot at AOM, same source.
The other possibilities are IAG with Vueling, for Spanish routes which might have some interest for the group. easyJet might follow the same way. Air Algérie is also interested. Wizzair also shown its interest into Aigle Azur file.
The French Government says that it will come out in favour of the best offers for jobs.
Potential investors or airlines have until Wednesday at 23:59 (UTC+2) to improve their offers.
Final decision to be taken on Monday 16 September 2019.
