German Government keeps Condor afloat with 550 Million

Ralf Teckentrup has been through this before. When the former owner Thomas Cook went bankrupt last autumn, the Condor boss had to ask for state aid. The governments of Germany and the state of Hessen stood by the holiday airline and guaranteed a loan.

Now Teckentrup had once again call Berlin and Hessens Capital Wiesbaden. «As an operationally healthy and profitable company, Condor has got into trouble for the second time in almost half a year through no fault of its own,» he explains.

EU has already agreed

The government is willing to help. Condor will receive a loan from the German government’s Corona Shield Programme, which is guaranteed by the Federal Republic of Germany and Hesse, as announced on Monday (27 April). It consists of two parts. On the one hand, the holiday airline will receive 294 million euros as corona aid. On the other hand, he will receive 256 million to repay the part of the 380 million credit from the autumn that he has used up to now. The EU has already approved the aid, he said.

The support had been requested «to prevent liquidity bottlenecks caused by the immense impact of the Corona pandemic on air traffic and to repay the existing loan in full despite the resignation of the contractually agreed new owner PGL,» the company said in a press release. Flight operations are thus secured.

Buyer PGL withdraws

The original plan was for Polska Grupa Lotnicza to take over PGL Condor. The German airline could have used the money to repay the state-guaranteed loan. But because of the Corona crisis, Lot’s mother withdrew. She definitively blew the deal in mid-April. Condor still has one problem to solve with it: it has to find a new owner.