A Hong Kong-based good bargain airline that operates daily flights to Vancouver and London confine down and applied by reason of liquidation Wednesday, a year and a moiety after it launched as a specialist in long-haul budget travel.

Chief executive Stephen Miller told a news conference on Wednesday that Oasis has suspended its flights and that liquidators will seek new investors.

One of the hold out Oasis passenger flights arrives at Hong Kong International Airport from London on Wednesday.
(Kin Cheung/Associated Press)

The fate of its 700 employees wasn’t immediately clear.

Miller did not take questions and Edward Middleton, a participator at the airline’s liquidator, accounting firm KPMG, said he hasn’t had the chance to study the company’s public resources in detail.

Middleton said Oasis’s flights were fully booked in the nearest few days and that tens of thousands were booked on upcoming flights.

Hong Kong Secretary for Transport and Housing Eva Cheng told reporters the government has asked other airlines to help transport Oasis’s outstanding passengers at discounted prices.

She said there appears to exist sufficiency capacity to make up for Oasis’s Hong Kong-Vancouver services but that that London flights were tightly booked.

Oasis had offered one-way flights to London for as low as the equivalent of $130.

Wednesday’s announcement came after the Hong Kong Economic Times newspaper reported that Oasis has accumulated losses of 1 billion Hong Kong dollars ($128 million) subsequently to it launched in October 2006.

The airline has been loss more than $128,000 on each long-haul flying it operates, the paper related, because it charges low fares and relies in the main on the internet against bookings.

Oasis is privately held and controlled by entrepreneur Raymond Lee and his matron, who together hold a stake of more than 50 per cent. Other investors hold Allan Wong, chairman of local electronics firm VTech Holdings Ltd., who has a 20 per cent stake.

The Lees did not attend Wednesday’s news meeting for consultation.

In October, Hong Kong-based fund management firm Value Partners Ltd. said it would beset $30 million for a five to 10 per cent stake in the airline.

At that time, Lee said he felt comfortable with the capital raised for the airline’s opening needs, adding Oasis’s existing shareholders had already injected around $20 million to boost the airline’s funding. Oasis had incipient startup funding of about $100 million.

© The Canadian Press, 2008