The management of the low-cost airline SkyEurope, which was granted bankruptcy protection by a district court in Bratislava on June 22, had been assuring its customers that the situation will not affect them in any way.

However, on the evening of the same day Paris’s Orly airport kept a SkyEurope Boeing 737 which had arrived from Prague from departing, allegedly because SkyEurope had not been paying the airport fees, the TASR newswire reported.

The plane was supposed to fly back to Prague with passengers.

“40 travelers were flown to Prague with a substitute plane and the rest will fly tomorrow afternoon,” Tomáš Kika, spokesman for SkyEurope told the Czech daily Hospodářské Noviny. TASR

In February SkyEurope has cancelled the flight Manchester-Birmingham on July 19, which I booked on January 4. On March 23-rd I asked SkyEurope for refund in the amount of EUR 137.00. On May 7-th the Reservation Agent informed me that they have processed my refund request, it was forwarded to the financial department on April 15-th and the refundable amount will be credited back to my card account within the next 4-6 weeks. Nobody contacted me since that time and they are not replying for my further complaints. THEY ARE REALLY IN DEEP FINANCIAL TROUBLE!

Your sad story is one of a number I now hear, I am afraid .

I know quite a lot about this company and it was a crash just waiting to happen . The company had quite an advantage when they started , they had to make no VAT (DPH ) payments !!

Total mis-management from the start of operations ( why open a hub in Hungary ?? ) and the guy who first ran Sky, was a 24 year old student and ran it rather like a 'student bus' service. The world oil price hikes did not help them, neither that fact that the Austrians and Hungarians seemed unwilling to travel to Bratislava airport . Mind you, this was not helped by slow connections to the airport , as there were no direct fast train links to/from major citys and long term parking was always difficult to find. These matters are only being resolved now !

Central Europe and Slovakia needs flights and another regular carrier other than Ryanair. I know several people who bought property and even have a hotel-holiday business based on regular Sky flights into Poprad , the Tatry mountain ski location . That route, if they do go pop bang will have no regular daily connections with other EU countries. A four-five hour car drive from Bratislava or 2 hour trip from Poland is the other alternative .