The offer to buy Norilsk-Nickel’s two airliners Nordavia and Taimyr (operating under the brand Nord Star) is sent to several other Russian airliners, including Utair and Aeroflot, Kommersant reports on Tuesday. Aeroflot says they do not consider the offer of buying the companies, while UTair says the offer will be considered by the company’s shareholders.
Nordavia was bought by Norilsk-Nickel in 2011 with the plan to merge the airliner with Taimyr airlines. The merge did not happen and the sale is believed to be a part of Norilsk-Nickel’s restructuring plan where most non-core businesses are to be put up for sale.
Nordavia has a somewhat noisy and bumping history. In the Barents Region, the company operates the only east-west flight connection with the flights between Arkhangelsk – via Murmansk – to Tromsø.
The air company was born as one of many so-called “BabyFlots” after state owned Aeroflot was split into parts in the early 1990s, then under the name Arkhangelsk Airlines. In 2004, Aeroflot acquired the company and renamed it Aeroflot-Nord, still with flights connecting Murmansk and Arkhangelsk with Moscow and St. Petersburg. The contract with Aeroflot was ceased in 2009 after one of the company’s Boeing 737 crashed on approach to the airport in Perm in the Urals. Aeroflot-Nord was the renamed Nordavia, but still with Aeroflot as one of the main shareholders.
The company operated on the brink of bankruptcy until it was bought by Norilsk-Nickel in 2011.
Nordavia has a fleet of nine Boeing 737 aircrafts with an average age of 21,8 years.
