State to take over Maribor Airport
The Slovenian government has announced that the state-owned DRI consulting and engineering company, which specialises in infrastructure projects, will take over the management of Maribor Edvard Rusjan Airport as a stop-gap solution after the current operator's lease prematurely ends on July 15. The decision comes after the Chinese-backed airport operator SHS announced in January it was invoking a six-month notice and terminating its fifteen-year lease agreement it signed in 2017 due to delays in receiving necessary state approval for its ambitious 660 million euro airport expansion project. SHS had previously failed to deliver on many of the development plans it envisaged for Maribor Airport.
The lease transfer to DRI will see Slovenia avoid paying several million euros in penalties to the European Union. The EU invested six million euros into Maribor Airport's terminal building under the condition it remains operational until at least November 2021. Had a new operator not been found, the airport would have been closed and the government would have been obligated to pay back all of the EU funds. The Slovenian Minister for Infrastructure, Alenka Bratušek, said this was just a stop-gap solution as the state had no intention of managing the airport in the long-run. "The long-term options involve either finding a new operator or selling the airport. I believe the first option is more likely", Ms Bratušek said. She added, "I do wonder how such a bad partner had been chosen to operate the airport in the first place".
Maribor Airport currently has no scheduled commercial flights. However, it is utilised by several companies including Medical Helicopter Emergency Services and the ACC Air School. Edvard Rusjan Airport has been without any scheduled commercial flights since VLM Airlines, which was formerly owned by SHS, went into liquidation last September. The carrier initially planned to link Maribor with Belgrade, Berlin, Hamburg, London, Podgorica, Zurich, Xi'an, Chongqing and Nanchang, however, none of the routes materialised. In 2017, SHS outlined plans to invest hundreds of millions of euros into Maribor Airport by extending its runway and overhauling its facilities, after which, it said, services to China would commence.
0 Response to "State to take over Maribor Airport"
Post a Comment