This leads to the decommissioned regional airline Silver Airways and its bankruptcy property in the Caribbean affiliate Seaborn Virgin Islands. With their assets under auction, the councillors overseeing both asked the Fort Lauderdale judge to turn the transition to liquidation of the Environment Chapter 11 reorganization case into greenlight.
“All the debtor’s estates are administratively insolvent,” wrote Soneto Kapila, a trustee appointed last month by US bankruptcy judge Peter Rasin, in a move to court.
Kapila wrote that “the cost of the Chapter 11 case increases daily” when a request for repayment is received from creditors that they say are debts since Silver and Seaborne applied late last year to protect them from creditors.
“So there was a significant and continuous loss or reduction in the estate,” Kapila said.
“There is no possibility of rehabilitation,” Kapila added. “The sale of virtually all assets of the debtor has been approved by this Court, and each sale transaction has been closed.”
“There’s no business rehabilitation,” he said. “In addition, there is no reasonable possibility that the trustee will confirm the reorganization plan.”
A hearing on Kapila’s allegations is set for July 31st.
Employee claims
It remains unclear how much money will be available to former employees who filed a claim with the court for Backpay. In various applications, former employees, from flight crew members to ground workers, complain that they are borrowing various amounts of backpay. The court file contains several letters and emails to the judge from employees who say they have not been paid in May or June.
In an email Thursday, Kapila told South Florida’s Sun Sentinel that it would need to investigate the scope of claims from former employees and other employees seeking repayments that have still occurred since both airlines sought court protection on December 30th.
“This case is still young and there are a lot of post-claims,” Kapila said. “The recovery of employees and similarly located administrative claimants will depend on future recovery of bankruptcy properties.”
Judge Rasin will hear the employee’s claims. This is also July 31st.
Based in Hollywood, Silver worked in 28 Florida destinations, other southeastern states, in the Bahamas 14 years ago. After closing in early June, the airline’s assets were sold to affiliates of Wexford Capital, an investment group that maintains offices in West Palm Beach and Greenwich, Connecticut.
Seaborn, which Silver acquired in 2018, has been flying in the Caribbean for 25 years. After the island hopping airline was acquired at auction by Leonite Fund I LP, a Delaware-based investment group, earlier this month, the Sole seaplane still serves St. Thomas and St. Croix.
Original issue: July 17, 2025, 4:37pm EDT
