Connexxion to lose one million Euros on Helinet

Connexxion to lose one million Euros on Helinet

7-Dec-2010 Source: Rotorspot.nl

The Amsterdam-based Helinet helicopter company is bankrupt. Helinet, who wanted to set up a helicopter network connecting 22 cities in the Netherlands and Belgium, has run out of money. Regional carrier Connexxion loses one million euros.

Helinet wanted to set up its own heliports in 22 Dutch and Belgian municipalities, but did not get any further than the existing heliport in the Amsterdam western harbour area.

With strong support from regional carrier Connexxion the two Helinet owners (who used to work in the IT-business), had planned to traverse the Dutch airspace with helicopter routes in all directions, routes especially designed for business people who wanted to avoid traffic jams.

With a ticket price of 170 euros for Amsterdam-Rotterdam and 470 euros for Amsterdam-Brussels, Helinet wanted to compete with taxis.

Last week the company itself, based in the Amsterdam WTC, pulled the plug. Almost instantaneously they were declared bankrupt. The investors, led by Connexxion, no longer wanted to pay the bill. No more the less because the company already had a debt of about 600,000 euros, partly with their bank ABN Amro.

”At the start of the company we have promised around one million euros, because we considered this to be a good initiative,” a Connexxion spokesman said. ”That amount has been paid”. Last year Helinet asked for additional funding. We have not accepted that. ”First we wanted to see results.”

Connexxion, at that time state-owned, paid the one million euros out of its commercial activities. In addition, the Connexxion taxi branch would take care of the road transport to and from the Helinet heliports.

Helinet’s Aernout Dekker attributes the demise of the company to “politics”. The concept was good, the operation was financially feasible, the market was there” said Dekker, who, together with his co-stakeholder, according to his own story looses hundreds of thousands of Euros. “But in the Netherlands helicopters are seen as toys for the rich: dangerous, noisy, unsafe. Thanks to politics, who do not mind at all.

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