Popular holiday airline enters liquidation, no refunds for travelers | Official Website of Louis Velazquez, entrepreneur, finance guy and tech innovator

On the second-to-last day of 2024, budget vacation airline Silver Airways announced that it would seek bankruptcy protection in the Southern District of Florida.

While initially reassuring travelers that it would be able to quickly emerge from bankruptcy and carry on operations as usual, the following months brought with them a beleaguered search for investors and slow eviction from numerous airports.

At the start of January, Silver lost the right to fly into the British territory of Anguilla and a month later had to pull flights out of a key hub in Orlando International Airport (MCO) — in both cases, over unpaid debts and airport fees.

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Silver shut down last month, telling travelers to ‘not go to the airport’

Connecticut hedge fund Argentum Acquisition eventually made a stalking-horse offer but the $5.77 million accepted by Judge Peter D. Russin due to an absence of other offers was barely enough to make a debt in the more than $500 million owed to creditors.

With the sale approved and Argentum ordering an immediate shutdown of operations, Silver put out a June 11 Instagram post telling travelers with booked tickets to “not go to the airport.”

“In an attempt to restructure in bankruptcy, Silver entered into a transaction to sell its assets to another airline holding company who unfortunately has determined to not continue Silver’s flight operations in Florida, the Bahamas, and the Caribbean,” the airline said in its last public statement.

While Argentum had sought Department of Transportation permission to transfer all of Silver’s aviation licenses and relaunch as a new airline called “Argentum Airways”, this will have to be done with a new fleet. On July 28, the bankruptcy court officially transitioned Silver from Chapter 11 to Chapter 7 liquidation to recoup losses to investors.

The airline launched out of Fort Lauderdale in 1988 had a fleet of eight ATR turboprop planes that it used on short flights to destinations such as Orlando and Tampa in Florida and Nassau, St. Kitts, and San Juan in the Caribbean.

Silver Airways launched in 1988 as a vacation airline in Florida.

Image source&colon; Shutterstock

‘The contemplated asset sale values total at present less than $10 million’

“It is not lost on the court that the debtors borrowed collectively several hundred million dollars, yet the contemplated asset sale values total at present less than $10 million,” Judge Peter D. Russin wrote in his order to authorize the sale to Argentum back in June.

After filing for bankruptcy and seeking out new investors, Silver’s losses continued to accrue. It reported losses $500,000 in February 2025 and $2.5 million in March 2025 while owing a respective $84,000 and $385,000 to airports in Tallahassee and Tampa as well as $8 million to taxing authorities.

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When it suddenly ceased operations, Silver told passengers with booked travel to seek refunds from their credit card companies as they would not be able to provide them.

Viewed as unsecured creditors in a bankruptcy proceeding, individual travelers usually do not have losses large enough to be worth even a class-action lawsuit and are so at the very end of the repayment list for a court. Several of the airports owed funds by Silver had already tried suing the airline without result.