Slovak Sky Europe Agrees To Pay Daily Taxes To Romanian Airport

"Sky Europe decided to pay airport services daily, cash, so traffic is unfolding 100%. They didn’t come today, however, because Baneasa was foggy, they took from the Otopeni Airport," Mihalcea said.

A Sky Europe plane was grounded Tuesday evening on Baneasa Airport, because of an overdue debt worth EUR529,000 owed by Sky Europe to the airport. The plane took off Wednesday, around 13.30 local time, towards Vienna, without any passengers onboard, after paying the airport taxes.

Secretary of state within the Ministry of Transport Marin Anton said Wednesday that the plane was grounded so that company representatives would be forced to pay the overdue debts to the airport. But since the airline company has a court decision that allows it to be protected by the bankruptcy law, Romanian authorities asked them to at least pay the taxes for each flight.

Slovak low-cost airline company SkyEurope announced on June 22 that it has entered bankruptcy to reorganize business, with the economic crisis in the backdrop.

According to Sky Europe, during the bankruptcy procedure, the company will continue flights, maintain jobs and salaries.

The airline operator announced early this year that the turnover is drastically affected by the global economic crisis and they were forced to reduce their fleet to just five planes, from 15 Boeing 737s in 2008. Sky Europe has never reported a profit in its six years of existence.