And another ne gone.....

Steyr

Sterling Airlines is gone.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601085&sid=alDRySb.18.Q&refer=europe

Sterling Airlines of Denmark Is Declared Bankrupt (Update3)

By Christian Wienberg and Tasneem Brogger

Oct. 29 (Bloomberg) -- Sterling Airlines A/S was declared bankrupt after its Icelandic owner ran out of money, adding Denmark's second-largest carrier by fleet size to a list of more than two dozen around the world to cease operating this year.

Sterling filed for bankruptcy after it failed to find a buyer and grounded all of its 24 planes registered in Denmark, stranding passengers, the Copenhagen-based airline said in a statement on its Web site today. It now faces liquidation.

Airlines have suffered this year from rising fuel prices and slowing traffic growth as the global financial crisis deters tourists and business executives from flying. Owner Palmi Haraldsson's plan to provide enough capital to keep Sterling going until 2009 was undermined by the collapse of the Icelandic financial system, the airline said. Iceland on Oct. 24 secured a $2.1 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund.

``Negotiations have been conducted with several potential investors, but it was impossible to make ends meet,'' the company said in the statement. ``The inevitable result is that Sterling Airlines has no option but to file for bankruptcy.''

Global airline-passenger traffic fell in September, the first drop in five years, the International Air Transport Association said on Oct. 24. The industry may lose more than $5.2 billion this year, the IATA estimated.

Ticket Holders' Losses

Sterling said customers who bought their tickets on the company's Web site won't receive refunds. According to broadcaster TV2, as many as 40,000 customers are holding tickets that are now worthless.

Stockholm-based SAS Group's Danish unit, with the country's largest fleet, today offered stranded Sterling customers free transportation, excluding airport taxes, back to Scandinavian destinations. The offer, which is limited to seats not reserved for paying SAS passengers, ends tomorrow at midnight.

SAS rose 7.1 kronor, or 22 percent, to 38.90 kronor in Stockholm trading and was today's best performer in the Bloomberg World Airlines Index of 36 airlines, which gained 1.5 percent.

``SAS has had problems lowering its capacity to adjust to weaker demand, so this is a helping hand,'' Steven Brooker, a Copenhagen-based analyst with SEB Enskilda, said by telephone. ``In the short term, overcapacity in the Scandinavian airline market will disappear and in the long-term, Danish clients may be more wary of booking tickets with discount airlines.''

SAS filled 69.6 percent of available seats in September, a 6.3 percentage-point drop from a year earlier, the airline said on Oct. 7. The number of passengers fell 8.4 percent to 3.3 million.

24 Carriers Gone

IATA in June listed 24 carriers that collapsed or filed for bankruptcy in the prior six months.

Iceland's Fons Eignarhaldsfelag hf bought Sterling from A.P. Moeller-Maersk A/S, the world's biggest container-shipping company, in 2005. Sterling has since changed owners two times. It currently employs around 1,100 people, according to TV2.

``Over a three- to four-week period, the whole financial system melted down, and that resulted in our shareholder being unable to continue his support to the company,'' the Sterling statement said.

Sterling said it's advising customers who bought their tickets by credit card to contact their card company or bank, while people who bought tickets through travel agents should contact them.

Norwegian Air Shuttle

Budget airline Norwegian Air Shuttle ASA said today it will open offices in Copenhagen to tap demand after Sterling's collapse. The Fornebu, Norway-based carrier will add 11 routes serving the Danish capital by May 2009 and five routes connecting with Stockholm this month, it said.

Ryanair Holdings Plc, Europe's biggest discount airline, is offering a 100-euro ($127) ``rescue fare'' for stranded Sterling passengers, the Dublin-based carrier said.

The airline's liquidation will be administered by solicitor Pernille Bigaard of Copenhagen's Plesner law firm, said Joy Winter, a spokeswoman for Denmark's Maritime and Commercial Court, which handled the bankruptcy filling, in a telephone interview.

To contact the reporters on this story: Tasneem Brogger in Copenhagen at tbrogger@bloomberg.net; Christian Wienberg in Copenhagen at cwienberg@bloomberg.net

Davidth88

If its the same Stirling ( may have been through some morphs ) , then they really kept STN alive back in the 80's with their SUnday shopping flights....

Stirling 727's , remember them well

Only last Friday I saw one of their aircraft in FCO