The story of hydroplanes that will connect Croatian islands with the mainland and Croatia with Italy has become a real saga. At the end of last year, media reports indicated that the hydroplane business of former European Coastal Airlines (ECA) director Klaus Dieter Martin was taken over by a new company, Airways Europe, and that Zdravko Delić had operationally joined the team, which he confirmed. Delić is the general manager of Delta Air and the representative of Piper in Croatia, as well as the former president of the Management Board of the Aviation Technical Center in Velika Gorica, and was supposed to operationally take over the business in Croatia instead of Martin.
According to current data from the Court Register, the head of Airways Europe since the beginning of the year is Laura Protat, an Italian who is mentioned in regional media as an excellent helicopter pilot. Protat led Airways Montenegro in Montenegro, where she organized helicopter tours of the country and aircraft rentals for private charters throughout the region. She is also mentioned as one of the key figures in Riana Group, headquartered in Dubai, where she is responsible for commercial aviation and establishing charter routes between Italy, France, and Southeast Europe.
At the helm of Airways Europe, which took over the hydroplane business from the failed ECA, is Italian Laura Protat, one of the leaders of Riana Group, whose headquarters is in Dubai.
>>>ECA: This Year Only Lawsuits, and Hydroplanes Again Only Next Year
For some time now, it has been speculated that the hydroplane business will be taken over by capital from Dubai, which is now confirmed by the appointment of Laura Protat to the leading position at Airways Europe, a company that has its registered office in the Netherlands. Apparently, Dieter Martin, after finding new investors, has ‘exited’ the whole story, but before that, he filed a lawsuit against Croatia, seeking millions in damages for business sabotage.
ECA’s hydroplanes were grounded the year before last in the middle of the season after an inspection by the Croatian Civil Aviation Agency, which identified deficiencies in the maintenance of the aircraft. That same year, ECA ended up in pre-bankruptcy settlement with debts of around fifty million kuna.
>>>British Airways Directly Connects Pula and London Heathrow
The company Airways Europe does not have a website, and its contacts are not listed in the telephone directory, making it difficult to know at this moment whether Delić’s announcements about the re-establishment of hydroplane lines in 2018 will materialize. The directors of the port authorities from Pula and Rijeka, Donald de Gravisi and Denis Vukorepa, confirmed to local media that the new company has purchased ECA’s pontoons and modular houses and has shown interest in maintaining hydroplane lines from the port of Rijeka.
