Air Albania, the national airline, has been experiencing major problems in recent days. According to the official website of Tirana International Airport, today, December 8, Air Albania has not operated any flights.
Even for December 9th, there are no flights scheduled with Air Albania on the TIA website.
Travel agencies told Monitor that the airline has not operated any flights since Saturday. Passengers who had intercontinental transit trips via Istanbul were directed via Pristina or Podgorica Airports.
For December 9, although no scheduled flights from Air Albania appear on the TIA website, the agencies said that the flights continue to appear in the system.
It is also possible to buy a ticket to Istanbul from Tuesday evening on the Air Albania website.
Although there are many destinations on the website, the company has long operated only with Istanbul and Milan routes, but now there are no flights to Milan. The only destination where Air Albania is continuing to sell tickets is Istanbul. Travel agencies said that the company has announced that flights will resume on Tuesday and that travel is active in the system.
The problems with the operator began after Turkish Airlines announced that it had decided to sell its entire 49% stake in Air Albania. Travel agencies said that until Saturday they could expect tickets through Turkish Airlines (for transit trips), while tickets from Tirana to Istanbul were expected by Air Albania itself. From Saturday, when Air Albania flights were stopped, agencies could no longer expect tickets with Turkish.
selling
In mid-November, in an announcement published on the Turkish Public Transparency Platform (KAP), Turkish Airlines stated: “Our board has decided to sell all of its stake in Air Albania SHPK, in which our company owns 49%. We will share important developments with investors soon.”
Air Albania was officially founded on May 16, 2018 as a public-private partnership between Albania and Turkey.
The airline had as its main shareholder the Turkish company Turkish Airlines (49.12%) and the remaining shares are shared by the Albanian state-owned company Albcontrol (~10%) and a private Albanian company MDN Investment (~41%).
The first regular flight took place on September 14, 2018, on the Tirana-Istanbul route.
In 2023, Air Albania managed to become the second largest operator in the country, with 7% of the market. But, in 2024, it dropped to third place, with a weight of 3.4% according to the number of passengers.
Competition from "Wizz Air" and "Ryanair" has affected this operator's activity in destinations other than Istanbul.
The company has never submitted a balance sheet. According to data from Taxes, the company's annual turnover was around 3.8 billion lek in 2021, reaching around 5 billion lek in 2022 and 5.5 billion lek in 2023.
In 2024, revenues are around 4 billion lek, according to indirect data from Taxes. The company has historically resulted in high losses, turning it into a practically bankrupt company today./Monitor.al/
