Transport minister, airports agree to service VIM-Avia flights

MOSCOW, Sep 28 (PRIME) -- Transport Minister Maxim Sokolov has agreed with Russian airports and fueling companies to continue servicing all flights of troubled airline VIM-Avia, and passengers will be carried until October 15, the ministry said in a statement late on Wednesday.

The ministry recommended all passengers with tickets for VIM-Avia flights scheduled after October 15 return their tickets.

The airline has been delaying a large amount of flights since mid-summer, and on Monday it admitted it had no money to continue its activities and would have to stop charter flights. On Tuesday, the airline asked for state guarantees to buy fuel.

The ministry said that owners of the Domodedovo airport will allow five VIM-Avia’s planes, which were grounded over debts, to fly to the airport of Antalya, which will help the air carrier to bring back 2,000 charter flight passengers. The company planned to fly from the Vnukovo airport to Blagoveshchensk, Krasnodar, and Simferopol and from Anadyr to Moscow until the end of Wednesday, and is preparing a flight from St. Petersburg to Beijing.

The Deposit Insurance Agency, the bankruptcy manager of Mosstroyeconombank (M-Bank), has filed a bankruptcy suit against Vim-Avia to the Arbitration Court of the republic of Tatarstan on behalf of the bank over the airline’s 88.347 million ruble debt.

The ministry also said that the emergency response center will hold the next meeting on the situation at 9.00 a.m. Moscow time on Thursday.

Earlier this week, the Investigative Committee launched a criminal case against the airline accusing its managers of stealing passengers’ money. The committee’s official representative Svetlana Petrenko said on Wednesday that the authority was working to discover conditions and reasons of the situation, and to find all guilty persons and victims.

Yelena Markovskaya, a representative of the Moscow interregional transport department of the Investigative Committee, asked all passengers and companies that suffered from actions of VIM-Avia to submit their claims to investigative authorities.

(58.0102 rubles – U.S. $1)

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