Paphos wants own airline after Cyprus Airways cuts route, Eurocypria may be revived

Eurocypria, the state-owned carrier may be rescued from administration and its flight crews rehired by a new venture in Paphos, after troubled Cyprus Airways announced it would terminate all flights from the coastal town to Stansted, Manchester, Birmingham, Frankfurt and Athens next week.
Paphos mayor Savvas Vergas called for a general boycott of all CAIR flights, saying that the national carrier’s decision will affect 50,000 seats, in addition to the 35,000 that were lost when Eurocypria closed in November.
He also confirmed that a new venture may be created as soon as this Saturday when all local partners meet to decide on starting a Paphos-based airline with an initial fleet of two aircraft and a starting capital of 10 mln euros.
Paphos has already established its own tourism development company that has successfully organised the opera near the harbour for the past 12 years and local hoteliers are keen to invest in such a venture. Paphos, they say, accounts for a third of all the island’s tourism industry.
Archbishop Chrysostomos II, who hails from Paphos, may give the new venture his blessing as he was critical of Eurocypria’s closure and was keen to save the 300 jobs at the charter operator.
“The cancellation of these routes, which are loss-making, arose from the need to limit losses and help Cyprus Airways on its course to recovery,” said a CAIR announcement, which added that “other routes were also cancelled, which started from Larnaca airport, in a more general effort by the company to make its flight schedule more efficient and cease the loss-making haemorrhage.”
It said that, “if Cyprus Airways allowed the situation to develop without taking rescue measures, they would have no hope of survival, with all the negative consequences such a development would have on our country’s tourism and economy”.
This is a far cry from the arrogant announcements by CAIR management and union chiefs last summer that had demanded that Eurocypria be shut down in order for Cyprus Airways to survive and absorb the charter operator’s routes and nearly profitable business.
A blogger on the Cyprus Mail website, “nigel from GB” commented: “We have (or had) flights booked from Stansted to Paphos for May and August. We paid for the May flight back in July 2010.We have not heard a thing from Cyprus Airways, no email or phone call to find out the flights are now cancelled. By reading it here is not great customer service!”
The official administrator of Eurocypria told the Financial Mirror last week that investors from Cyprus, Greece and Russia were keen to take on Eurocypria’s debt and its operations, including part of the fleet of six Boeing 737-400s.