The collapse of Spanair

The collapse of the Spanair airline has not been that different from the rest of the financial disasters recently seen in the sector, in terms of the initial impact it has had on the public. But, precisely because this has happened so often before, it is all the less forgivable. Tens of thousands of passengers - more than 22,000 at the weekend alone - wandering nomadically around different airports in search of an alternative ticket, and a serious absence of reliable information, are two evils resulting from the firm's "abrupt" cessation of activities, as the Public Works Ministry has termed it in explanation of its planned sanctions.

These dirty tricks played on the customer are not just casual, but the direct result of the precipitation, improvisation and frivolity with which the company's management has acted. Its president, Ferrán Soriano, knew beforehand the likelihood of the financial outcome - as did, in the recent past, the head of the failed Marsans travel agency, Gerardo Diáz Ferrán. As such, Soriano should have overseen an orderly closure, one that would have minimized damage to the airline's customers. He did not do this. Soriano is, then, directly to blame for the chaos of the company's closure, and as such, ought to be responsible for it.

Another matter is the overall orientation and handling of Spanair in its period of Spanish (or specifically, Catalan) management, which began under the shadow of the accident at Madrid's Barajas airport. The capital input from the Catalan regional government (150 million euros), both in the time of the three-party government and later under the conservative Catalan nationalist party CiU, and the role played by certain well-known tourist industry entrepreneurs in the acquisition of Spanair from the Swedish line SAS and its later re-launch, would never have happened but for two relevant facts.

First, the abandonment of Barcelona's El Prat airport by Spain's flagship company Iberia. Second, the consequent abandonment of this facility to low-cost companies (of lower quality in terms of corporate traffic), to the detriment of connecting airlines.

While that company takeover - with the associated perils of involving a government subsidy open to dispute from Brussels - appeared, even in the beginning, more justifiable from the viewpoint of public transport than from that of the profitability to be expected in a private company, the subsequent deficient management of the firm cast shadows on its future. The absence of any public-sector supervision proportionate to the financing supplied, and the inanity of its leadership, which failed in its attempts to insert the company in one of the major airlines (trying this, nominally, with at least five of these) require an explanation.

Thus, what began as a temporary solution became a permanent one. As permanent as the ongoing financial problems. Spanair has fallen by the wayside, but the problems that it was supposed to solve remain standing.