At the end of September, the simultaneous bankruptcies of two separate Scandinavian airlines stranded tourists at multiple airports across Europe.

On Sept. 29, Reykjavik-based low-cost carrier Play Airlines announced that it was stopping all operations while Braathens Aviation, the parent company of two airlines running flights from smaller cities in Sweden, Denmark, and Finland, similarly announced that it was canceling all flights that it ran for chartered airlines Ving and Apollo after efforts to emerge from an earlier bankruptcy ultimately failed.

As first reported by Spanish outlet Maspalomas, isolated groups of Swedish tourists are still left stranded on the Canary Islands a week after their flights were canceled.

‘The bankruptcy took us by surprise’: travel company with stranded clients

The sudden cancellations affected at least eight flights scheduled to take off from Stockholm, Malmö, Goteborg, and Copenhagen to both cities across Scandinavia and popular resort destinations across Europe like Gran Canaria on Sept. 30.

Many of the stranded tourists are from Sweden and Denmark.

Getty Images.

“The bankruptcy took us by surprise,” Ving Communications Director Claes Pellvik told the news outlet. “We’re working intensively to find alternative flights. Just this morning, we had two departures from Norway and Denmark, and we’ve already found good solutions for them.” 

Related: Another regional airline files for bankruptcy, cancels all flights

Another Stockholm-based tour operator and charter airline whose customers had been booked on Braathens flights out of Gran Canaria, Apollo said that its team was taking it “flight by flight, day by day.” Both agencies had booked Braathens flights for passengers as part of wider holiday packages to sunny destinations.

An additional 1,200 Swedish tourists who booked trips to Gran Canaria later in the year are also facing uncertainty; Ving said that those who want to wait until the summer of 2026 — when the it expects flights from Dalarna Airport in central Sweden to resume — can be rebooked while others will get refunds for a canceled vacation.

The airline and tour operator connected tourists in more remote parts of the country to holiday destinations through Stockholm and other larger cities. Travelers passing through regional airports like Borlänge, Umeå, and Luleå are among those with disrupted travel plans.

Some tourists still stranded but operators ‘confident’ they ‘will find solutions’

“We are confident that we will find solutions in the coming weeks,” Pellvik said further. “We do not rule out the possibility of some flights being canceled, but in that case, customers will receive a full refund.”

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Kraantz also said that travelers “can rest assured that we will contact all those affected as soon as we have more information.”

After a long period of financial losses during the Covid pandemic, Braathens first filed for Chapter 11 protection in October 2023. While it initially emerged from it by restructuring and phasing out its Airbus contracts to focus on a downsized fleet of regional ATR72-600 airliners, the high cost of operations running flights from regions with low population numbers eventually caught up with it and caused the sudden cancelations.

“The financing we tried to secure for a controlled phase-out unfortunately did not materialize, and I understand that those affected are saddened, shocked, and disappointed,” Per G. Braathen, the chairman of the Braathens Aviation board and majority owner of Braathens, said in a statement at the time the bankruptcy was announced. “We now have no other choice but to shift focus to the part of the business that can achieve long-term profitability.”

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