Air Transport

Hong Kong’s Air Transport Licensing Authority (ATLA) has stripped grounded carrier Oasis Hong Kong Airlines of all its air traffic rights.

Lawyers for Oasis’ provisional liquidators told the ATLA the airline should be allowed to retain its international traffic rights but the authority decided to take all the traffic rights away because it determined that Oasis had gone into liquidation, the ATLA says in a statement on the Hong Kong Government’s website.

“A common condition of these licenses is that the license will lapse if the holder of the license is going into liquidation or is being wound up,” it says.

ATLA says Oasis in April presented a petition to Hong Kong’s High Court “for its own winding up by the court due to insolvency” and the court has appointed provisional liquidators. Since 9 April Oasis has ceased all operations and the liquidators have terminated the employment of most of the airline’s staff including all the pilots, it adds.

The air traffic rights Oasis has lost include rights to operate from Hong Kong to places such as: London Gatwick, Cologne, Berlin, Oakland, Chicago, Vancouver, Sydney, Melbourne, San Francisco, Bangkok, Ho Chi Minh City and Denpasar.

So far efforts to sell Oasis appear to have failed and ATLA’s decision creates another hurdle for anyone wishing to revive the business.

Source: flightglobal.com's sister premium news site Air Transport Intelligence news