Palmair dispute Astraeus £250,000 debt claim
22.01.11
Bournemouth based tour operator Palmair has rejected claims it owes charter airline and aircraft leasing company Astraeus over £250,000 in unpaid aircraft leasing fees, the Daily Echo reports. Astraeus allege they are owed the cash for the lease of a Boeing 737 from last year. Palmair say they terminated the contract and paid all due money up to date at the end October, but Astraeus said that it had ‘repossessed’ its Boeing 737 from Palmair at the end of that month after ‘RE Bath Travel Services (Palmair) was unable to honour its contractual obligations.’
At the time it was reported that the £8m plane was simply returned to its owner by Palmair, when it drastically scaled back operations at the end of last year. The ex-BA aircraft was launched in a blaze of glory at Bournemouth Airport in October 2009 and had been leased from Astraeus until April 2012, at a quarter of a million pounds a month. But Palmair ran into difficulties last year, blaming fuel prices, the global recession and competition from budget airlines for the decision to make all but 5 of its 31 staff redundant.
Astraeus say they are owed the November payment because they claim no agreement had been reached to terminate the lease. In a statement, Astraeus said: ‘It is with enormous regret that Astraeus Airlines does indeed confirm the repossession of one of our Boeing 737 aircraft from RE Bath Travel Services (Palmair), which had been based in Bournemouth. Efforts were made to negotiate a return of the aircraft, but these were not concluded and unfortunately RE Bath was unable to honour its contractual obligations. Given the scale of the debt, plus the length of contract which will not now be honoured... we reluctantly resorted to this [legal] action.’
The statement said Astraeus bosses hope that either Palmair or Bath Travel ‘is in a position to settle the issue.’ A spokesman for Astraeus told the Echo: ‘We do not want to take legal action. We’d much prefer to sit down round the table and talk. We don’t want to believe it will come to pursuing it legally.’
Stephen Bath, speaking on behalf of Palmair, told the Echo: ‘We came to an agreement with Astraeus in February last year to terminate the lease on October 31. This is indeed what happened and we were fully paid up at the end of that month. We do not accept we are liable for any debt after that because we do not believe there was a contract in existence after that point.’ Mr Bath said the dispute had nothing to do with Bath Travel and that the matter is in hands of Palmair lawyers. Palmair is a wholly owned subsidiary of Bath Travel.
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