Placed since the beginning of July under the bankruptcy regime in the United States, the Scandinavian airline SAS announced this Sunday an agreement that guarantees a loan of 700 million dollars.
SAS “has entered into a $700 million (equivalent to approximately SEK 7 billion) debtor-in-possession (DIP) financing credit agreement with funds managed by Apollo Global Management,” the operator said in a statement.
DIP financing allows companies to obtain liquidity to continue their activities under the protection of the bankruptcy law.
On July 5, SAS, which employs about 7,000 people, filed for bankruptcy in the United States as part of an ongoing restructuring.
Two weeks of costly strike
In the United States, the use of Chapter 11 is a device that allows a company that can no longer pay its debt to restructure itself protected from its creditors while continuing with its current operations.
“Now we can fully focus on accelerating the implementation of our SAS FORWARD plan,” he added, quoted in the press release.
SAS had announced in February a savings plan of some 750 million euros per year, reinforced in June with a capital increase project of one billion euros.
In July, SAS suffered a two-week pilots’ strike that cost the company between $9 million and $12 million a day.
The move was in protest at salary cuts demanded by management as part of the restructuring plan and against the company’s decision not to rehire pilots laid off during the Covid-19 pandemic.
According to the Swedish Airline Pilots Association (SPF), 450 pilots will be rehired as part of the deal that ended the strike.
Source: BFM TV
