Chartered Airline Business Crashes
Nick Cropper, Alastair Beveridge and Anne O’Keefe, partners at Zolfo Cooper, have been appointed joint administrators of Astraeus Ltd, a chartered airline business.
The Crawley-based company leases aircraft and crew to airlines and employs around 190 staff and approximately 80 contractors, most of whom have been made redundant.
The administrators say severe cash flow difficulties, combined with a lack of certainty on orders in the coming months, and the current economic climate, meant Astraeus had no viable prospect of continued trading. All aircraft have been grounded and will be returned and there is therefore no need to repatriate any passengers from overseas.
Cropper, partner at Zolfo Cooper, said: ‘The company has been left facing a number of insurmountable issues and unfortunately, we have been left with no alternative other than to cease trading immediately.’