However, the airline, which declared bankruptcy today after a last-ditch attempt at privatization failed to find a buyer, did achieve the initial goals it had been set, Urva went on.

He said: "For as long as the company stuck to its earlier strategies and developed incrementally, everything went well; in fact, the company even turned a profit."

"But at some point they wanted to expand significantly and explosively, yet were not able to secure sufficient resources for this, neither aircraft nor crew. I believe that ended up the fatal issue," Urva, head of Nordica 2019-2022, went on. Urva said that the company made a profit, for the first time, when he was in charge.

"Throughout the company's history there had been a bit of overreaching, before too. Let us recall the early years – they started adding new destinations, but at the same time, they weren't able to adequately secure flight crews," Urva outlined.

According to Urva, the company did also navigate the Covid pandemic, which hit the entire sector hard, successfully. "Once that had passed, development resumed, but one of the key factors leading to the company's winding up was the cooperation with SAS [ending]. Had that partnership continued, the company could have carried on, even though the expansion decisions of the previous few years had led to losses."

Urva added that the concept of a national airline has significantly changed in recent years. He does not foresee the state establishing another airline – which would be the third since independence, following Estonian Air's shuttering in 2015.

"Nordica actually fulfilled the expectations initially placed on it. It was established when Estonian Air had been forced to shut down, to ensure regular flight connections from Tallinn would not be interrupted. That goal was met. However, the market landscape changed, and when Estonians could fly cheaply out of Tallinn thanks to neighboring taxpayers' money, it indeed became pointless to continue scheduled flights from Tallinn. That was also why flights began to be discontinued in 2019," Urva explained, referring to Latvian carrier airBaltic.

Urva had headed Estonian Air from 2002 to 2005 and was a supervisory board member 2012 to 2015. While Nordica received €70 million in state aid, including during the pandemic, in its nine years of existence, a European Commission ruling that Estonian Air, in operation 1991 to 2015, would have to return €85 million in illegitimate state aid led to its winding up. Nordica was founded on the very same day Estonian Air was liquidated: November 8, 2015.

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