REYKJAVIK, Iceland — Icelandic budget airline WOW Air ceased operations Thursday, stranding thousands of passengers across two continents.
WOW grounded at least six planes in North America that were set to leave late Wednesday from Detroit, Montreal, Toronto, Boston, New York and Baltimore.
All 29 of WOW's flights scheduled for Thursday were canceled and 2,700 passengers were asked to check with other airlines to get to their destinations.
In a statement on its website, the airline told passengers there would be no further flights and advised them to check flights with other airlines for ways to reach their destinations.
The low-cost airline, which operates out of Detroit Metropolitan Airport's North Terminal, began offering direct flights from Detroit to Europe in April. WOW flies out of Detroit four times per week, spokeswoman Lisa Gass told Crain's.
"Reykjavik moved from Detroit's 55th largest European destination to 5th, after just a few months of WOW service," Gass said in a statement. "Some months saw traffic between Detroit and Iceland jump as much as 2500% from a year earlier.
"As WOW's financial situation deteriorated, Detroit became one of the few remaining airports where WOW operated in the United States, on the strength of that Detroit customer support."
Gass said because the route from Detroit to Iceland has proved popular the airport is working to secure a replacement service.
The airline, founded by entrepreneur Skuli Mogensen, began operations in 2012 and specialized in ultra-cheap flights between North America and Europe, with flights to airports in cities including Washington, D.C., New York, Paris, London and its Reykjavik hub.
Its bankruptcy comes after six months of turbulent negotiations to sell the low-cost carrier, first to its main rival and flag-ship carrier Icelandair and later to Indigo Partners, an American company operating the airline Wizz.
"I will never forgive myself for not acting sooner," Mogensen said in a letter to employees Thursday. "WOW was clearly an incredible airline and we were on the path to do amazing things again."
In its early years, the airline expanded quickly to 37 destinations and reported up to 60 percent annual growth in passenger numbers. Its revenue per passenger, however, has not kept up and fell by about 20 percent in 2017, according to the last earnings report.
The closely held airline carried 3.5 million passengers last year. Its crisis has weakened the krona (the currency fell as much as 1.44 percent on Thursday alone), triggering cabinet meetings that saw the government rule out a rescue using taxpayers' money.
The discount carrier is the eighth European airline to have failed since the summer as margins are pinched by fluctuating fuel costs and over-capacity that's sparked a continent-wide fare war.
— Crain's Detroit Business and Bloomberg contributed to this report.