French subsidiary of Ireland’s CityJet enters liquidation

The French subsidiary of Ireland’s CityJet (WX, Dublin Int’l) has been placed into liquidation in the latest blow to the struggling wet-lease carrier, which has already seen other subsidiaries go bankrupt. France’s Bobigny commercial court on May 28 ordered the liquidation of CityJet’s French branch, resulting in the loss of approximately 80 jobs, Agence France Presse reported court documents as showing. The Dutch subsidiary of CityJet was declared bankrupt by the Netherlands Central Insolvency Register Judiciary (de Rechtspraak) on May 6 after the parent company announced in April that it could no longer pay the wages of the 35 pilots who worked for the company’s Dutch arm, CityJet BV. At around the same time in early May, CityJet announced it was closing its Brussels national base, laying off 90 employees at the airport, as a direct result of the cancellation of its contract with Brussels Airlines (SN, Brussels National). On April 21 CityJet’s companies in Sweden (CityJet Sweden AB) and Finland (CityJet Oy) filed for bankruptcy, pushing 100 staff into unemployment. CityJet had been a wet-lease operator for SAS Scandinavian Airlines (SK, Copenhagen Kastrup) and Aer Lingus (EI, Dublin Int’l) but its contracts were cancelled due to the coronavirus pandemic.