Airport, Estonia, Legislation, Transport

"I must admit that, at least in Central and Eastern Europe, there isn't a single airline that has succeeded with such a strategy," said Urva, who headed the company from 2000 to 2005, informs LETA.

In order to create such a hub, a carrier must offer many destinations and competitive, cheap tickets. Estonian Air couldn't do that and stay profitable, Urva said.

"In order to begin growing again, the company first has to get its act together. implementing consoledation, closing unprofitable routes and reducing the number of flights," Urva said.

As reported, Supervisory Council of Estonia's national airline Estonian Air has changed the company's head assigning Jan Palmer as the new CEO of Estonian Air as from November 1 , 2012.

At the same time, all the members of the Supervisory Council will present their membership resignation request to the Minister of Economic Affairs and Communications.

In autumn 2010, after acquiring the majority of company's shares, Estonian State set Estonian Air a target to increase connections from Estonia, and to achieve profitability. In 2011, in order to reach the goal, the company introduced a new strategy which focused on expansion of the route network.

"By the middle of this year, it was clear that the chosen strategy of Estonian Air had risks realization of which worsened the company's financial performance considerably," said the Chairman of Estonian Air Supervisory Council.

Estonian prime minister Andrus Ansip said on Thursday that the bankruptcy of the financially troubled national carrier Estonian Air is out of the question, LETA/Public Broadcasting reports.

"People can be quite convinced that the government won't let Estonian Air go bankrupt," said Ansip at the government's press conference.

Ansip had no major criticism agent Tero Taskila who was freed yesterday of the post of CEO of Estonian Air. "If the council decided to hire a new board chairman who presented his business plan and followed that business plan in his activities then really the board chairman cannot be criticised for much," sid Ansip.

Ansip said that the government had an overview of the business plan but it wasn’t the government's task to approve of it. "We cannot say that money was wasted criminally in Estonian Air. A plan was worked out and the evaluators considered the likelihood of it being implemented good. But life made revisions and the business plan did not work," said Ansip.

Ansip said that now a new business plan has to be developed. "We cannot just do nothing and say that we don’t ne dour own aviation company."

Estonian Air revealed on Wednesday that the nine months loss of the company was 20.2 million euros. At the same time last year the loss was 11.2 million euros. Estonian Air's council replaced the company's manager Tero Taskila with Jan Palmer and all council members will also resign.