The Romanian airline AnimaWings, which operates direct flights between Tel Aviv and Bucharest, announced this week that it has filed for bankruptcy proceedings due to financial difficulties. Those who found themselves affected by the situation are hundreds of Israeli passengers who arrived in Romania with the company – and this week received a message that their return flight was canceled.
“My husband and I arrived as part of an organized group last week, and we were supposed to return to Israel yesterday,” says Ziva, a resident of Harish. “Yesterday we received a message that our flight was canceled due to the company’s situation, and we are dozens of people here on an organized trip who have no way to get home.”
“We are hanging in the air because there is no supply of flights, from the information we received we understood that they submitted a request to the Israeli authorities to approve a local surcharge on flights to the Tarom company and this has not yet been approved, for now we are on the fence and are not getting answers from anyone.”
“The outbound flight was perfectly fine, it left on time and everything went as usual,” Ziva adds. “We were very surprised to hear that out of nowhere the company announced bankruptcy. What about us? Who will take care of us now? There is a feeling that in Israel they only deal with rescue flights from Dubai, but there are hundreds of Israelis here that we are talking to and not just our large group and there is no way to return to Israel. We are currently paying for hotel stays and additional expenses.”