Futura International Airways was an airline with its head office in the Zona Facturación on the property of Palma de Mallorca Airport in Palma de Mallorca, Spain. It operated scheduled services and charter flights for tour operators and other airlines, in Europe, as well as wet lease and ad hoc charters. Its main base was Palma de Mallorca Airport. After failing to re-finance itself the company ceased trading on the 8 September 2008, leaving many passengers stranded in and around Spain.
There was also an intrastate airline operating in California in the U.S. in 1962 flying as Futura Airlines with Lockheed Constellation propliners serving Los Angeles, Oakland, Sacramento, Fresno, Bakersfield and Lake Tahoe.
History
The airline was established in 1989 by Aer Lingus, Belton Air and Banco Santander, starting operations on 17 February 1990 with a flight from Palma de Mallorca to Manchester. During the 1990s, the airline expanded to cover the whole of Europe, including the Canary Islands in the South and Scandinavia and Iceland in the North, with charter flights, ad hoc charters, third party short-medium-long term operations (wet-lease) and ACMI. Under the leadership of CEO Roman Pané [http://www.iaca.be], it used to operate its own scheduled flights and ad hoc flights on behalf of various tour operators and airlines in Europe, North and South America, Africa and Southeast Asia. Futura operated from five permanent bases: Palma de Mallorca, Tenerife, Málaga, Gran Canaria and Dublin; as well as various other seasonal bases throughout the year. (Source: [https://web.archive.org/web/20050315222817/http://www.futura.aero/]).
The airline was later owned by Corpfin Capital (65%), Aer Lingus (20%) and management and employees (15%). On 16 October 2007, Corpfin Capital and Aer Lingus sold their stakes, during the process of a secondary buyout instigated by the present management team, making way for the participation of the investment fund Hutton Collins, so that the resulting shareholdings were as follows: the Futura Group (management and employees) had 53.5% and Hutton Collins owned 46.5%. The airline had 1,211 employees (at May 2008). It wholly owned cargo subsidiary Flyant (officially Servicios Aéreos Integrales S.A.) and Dublin-based Irish charter airline Futura Gael.
{| class="wikitable sortable"
! Aircraft
! #
! Seats
! Notes
|-
|Boeing 737-300 || 2 || 146 || one aircraft was operated by Aerolínea Principal
|-
|Boeing 737-400 || 11 || 170 || one aircraft was operated by Aerolínea Principal, one aircraft was operated for Blue Panorama Airlines, <br />two aircraft were operated for Jetairfly, one aircraft was operated for Air Algérie, one aircraft was operated for Binter Canarias and one aircraft was operated for Blue Air
|-
|Boeing 737-800 || 12 || 189 || one aircraft was operated for SunExpress, one aircraft was operated for JetX Airlines and one aircraft was operated for Jetairfly
|-
| || 2 || || which were operated for Arkefly
|-
|}
References
External links
- Futura International Airways (Archive)
- Futura International Airways (Archive)
- Futura International Airways Fleet
- Futura gets Europe's first 737-900ers
- Descriptif compagnie Futura International Airways