Champion Air to cease operations

photo by Drewski2112
Minneapolis-based charter carrier Champion Air has announced that it will end operations on May 31, after 11 years of flying. “This is a sad day for the entire Champion family,” said Champion President and CEO Lee Steele. He went on to say that Champion's "business model is no longer viable in a world of $110 oil, a struggling economy and rapidly changing demand for our services" and that "the management team and our board of directors have decided that the best course of action is to cease flying and to wind up our operations in a responsible, deliberate manner.”

Steele said that the airline was experiencing a "perfect storm" from a slow economy and the current state of credit markets, which had a "negative impact" on the airline's attempts to attract investors.

Champion's end marks not only the end of the airline but also for Boeing 727 passenger service in the US (Champion operates a fleet of 16 Boeing 727-200s). This announcement comes just days after Aloha Airlines' surprise shutdown, which also meant that another 'old-style' airplane, the Boeing 737-200, left US scheduled passenger service.

1 comments:

Unknown said...

Recession and inflation are two factors that have taken the whole world by storm. The slump in the economies has led to a major downfall in the travel and tourism sector also. Cost cutting and rightsizing, as they call it have hit most of the countries of the world. Under such circumstances it is only natural that the travel industry has seen a steep fall in the graph. Tourism has also declined in the countries like India that is one of the favorite destinations for the leisure traveler. Thankfully, since the country is now a growing lucrative market with a bulk of foreign investment, the number of business travelers has not witnessed a cut down. The business hotels situated in the major cities of India also have the facilities and ambience of luxury hotels, as these hotels most of the time cater to the overseas business travelers. The business hotels in Hyderabad and the hotels in Hyderabad along with the four metros can be counted in this group. Earlier amongst the metros, Delhi and Mumbai enjoyed the highest number of business travelers. However, times have changed now and Chennai and Kolkata are also fast becoming business hubs. The rising number of business hotels in Chennai and Kolkata is testimonial of this fact.