The flight operations of the financially troubled low-cost airline Blue Air have been suspended for a few weeks. Now the Boeing 737-500 with the registration YR-AME has been confiscated by the Romanian tax office. The machine was last parked in Bacău.

The background to the official measure is that, according to the authorities, the carrier is said to have significant arrears with the tax office and social security. In order to be able to bring this in, the YR-AME has now been seized. According to the local portal Boardingpass.ro, this Boeing 737-500 is said to be owned by Blue Air.

The medium further reports that the YR-BMN was also put on the chain. This is to be held at Cluj Airport. However, Blue Air is of the opinion that this is not affected, because this machine should no longer be part of the fleet. In fact, this Boeing 737, along with other ex-Blue Air jets, transferred to the Hello Jets AOC.

According to the low-cost airline, an appeal has been lodged against the official measure by the new operator. This should lead to the release of the affected medium-haul jet. With the YR-AMA, another Boeing 737-500 owned by the carrier has been passed on to Hello Jets. This aircraft has been parked in Forli, Italy, since the beginning of October 2022. According to Boardingpass.ro, it is unclear whether the Romanian authorities chained this plane as well.

Hello Jets is a sister company of Blue Air. Ownership is very similar and in recent weeks individual aircraft previously operated by the low-cost carrier have been re-registered to Hello Jets' AOC. The 737-Classic YR-AMA and YR-AME, which are owned by Blue Air, are particularly affected. The low-cost airline had to stop flight operations for financial reasons. An announced restart was repeatedly postponed. In the meantime, lessors have taken back all leased machines and some of them have already been given to new customers.