Cyprus Airways suspended all of its flying operations on January 9, after the European Commission (EC) ordered the airline to pay back €65m in illegal state aid. The EC said in a statement: "Cyprus Airways has received large quantities of public money since 2007, but was unable to restructure and become viable without continued state support. Therefore, injecting additional public money would only prolong the struggle without achieving a turnaround. Companies need to be profitable based on their own merits and ability to compete, and cannot, and should not rely on taxpayers' money to stay in the market artificially." Cyprus Airways, which was 93.67%-owned by the Cypriot Government, struggled financially for many years and had been offered for sale recently. Several loans paid to the airline in 2012 to keep it flying triggered the Commission to open its investigation in February last year. Under European Union rules, a company is only allowed to receive restructuring aid once in any ten years, and these were deemed to have breached EU state aid rules. Cyprus Airways was ordered to, "pay back all incompatible aid received", triggering the immediate grounding. The move left thousands of passengers stranded and the government had to step in to organise charter flights to get travellers to their destinations. It also pledged to cover the costs for people rebooking tickets with other carrier's for travel up to and including February 9.
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