Monarch Airline collapses: Huge operation launched to bring 110,000 holidaymakers home
Hundreds of holidaymakers turned up to Birmingham Airport in the early hours of this morning to find their flights had been cancelled after Monarch Airlines collapsed into administration.
Devastated passengers looking forward to heading off to Spain or Italy arrived to be told they were no longer able to travel. Many spent hours trying to book alternative flights while others simply grabbed their luggage and went home.
Birmingham Airport sent messages out via social media warning passengers not to turn up after the news broke.
The UK's biggest peacetime repatriation operation is now under way to get 110,000 customers back to the UK.
Three thousand passengers were due to arrive back at Birmingham today and the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) said it would aim to bring them all back to the airport wherever possible.
The CAA said it had been asked by the Government to charter more than 30 aircraft to bring the passengers back to the UK after the airline's board called in administrators KPMG in the early hours of Monday morning.
Around 165 were brought back into Gatwick from Ibiza at around 6.30am, and an hour later another of the aircraft, believed to have been loaned by Qatar Airways, brought other Ibiza holidaymakers back into Birmingham.
The CAA's airlift will bring back to the UK anyone booked on a Monarch flight for the next few weeks, at no extra charge.
Around 1,400 people had arrived at Birmingham Airport from 3.15am this morning to catch flights to Tenerife, Madeira, Faro, Barcelona, Rome, Lisbon, Palma, Alicante and Malaga. The announced of the Monarch collapse came an hour later, with all flights cancelled. An estimated 18,000 people were due to fly out of Birmingham with Monarch this week.
Passengers tweeted as they passed the grounded Monarch aircraft today:
While hundreds have gone home devastated at losing their holidays, others have rebooked to fly out with other airlines.
The collapse – the largest to hit a UK airline – has left some 300,000 future bookings cancelled and customers have been told to keep away from airports as there will be no more flights.
Passengers are urged to check a dedicated website for advice: http://monarch.caa.co.uk
The collapse is also a major blow for Birmingham Airport, which is a major base for Monarch which employs around 500 people there.
Around 10 of Monarch's aircraft are based at the airport where it was running around 20 flights a day to destinations around the Mediterranean and northern Europe. Monarch carries around 750,000 passengers out of Birmingham every year.
The airport said its immediate priority was looking after Monarch's disappointed passengers but in the longer term it will be talking to other airlines about filling the flight slots now left vacant by the budget carrier's collapse.
Birmingham Airport tweeted this morning: "If you're due to travel with @Monarch , pls do not come to the airport. The airline has sadly ceased trading. Pls see monarch.caa.co.uk ."
Monarch also has an aircraft engineering and maintenance operation at the airport, employing around 150, but this is unaffected by the collapse.
Administrator Blair Nimmo said Monarch, which employs around 2,100 people across its airline and tour group, had struggled with mounting costs and competitive market conditions that saw it suffer a period of sustained losses.
CAA chief executive Andrew Haines said the decision to stop trading would be "very distressing for all of its customers and employees".
"We are putting together, at very short notice and for a period of two weeks, what is effectively one of the UK's largest airlines to manage this task," he said.
"The scale and challenge of this operation means that some disruption is inevitable. We ask customers to bear with us as we work around the clock to bring everyone home."
The regulator said all Monarch customers who are abroad and due to return to the UK in the next two weeks will be flown home.
The flights will be at no extra cost to passengers and they do not need to cut short their stay, the CAA said. New flight details will be available a minimum of 48 hours in advance of customers' original departure times.
The Government has warned passengers to expect disruption and delay as it works to ensure there are enough flights to return the "huge number" of passengers.
Commenting on the "extraordinary operation", Transport Secretary Chris Grayling said: "I have immediately ordered the country's biggest ever peacetime repatriation to fly about 110,000 passengers who could otherwise have been left stranded abroad.
"This is an unprecedented response to an unprecedented situation. Together with the Civil Aviation Authority, we will work around the clock to ensure Monarch passengers get the support they need.
"Nobody should underestimate the size of the challenge, so I ask passengers to be patient and act on the advice given by the CAA."
The CAA had been expected to announce on Monday whether Monarch would be able to continue selling package holidays.
The low-cost airline and holiday company had a deadline of midnight on September 30 before its Air Travel Organiser's Licence (Atol) expired.
The firm was granted a 24-hour extension until midnight on October 1, but that also passed without any announcement of a renewal.
Mr Nimmo said: "Mounting cost pressures and increasingly competitive market conditions in the European short-haul market have contributed to the Monarch Group experiencing a sustained period of trading losses. This has resulted in management appointing us as administrators in the early hours of this morning."
Customers affected by the company's collapse have been urged to check a dedicated website, monarch.caa.co.uk, for advice and information on flights back to the UK. A 24-hour helpline is also available on 0300 303 2800 from in the UK and Ireland, and +44 1753 330330 from overseas.
Monarch, whose headquarters are at London Luton Airport, was founded in 1968.
The group's engineering operation, Monarch Aircraft Engineering, is not in administration and continues to trade normally.
UK travel firms selling holidays and flights are required to hold an Atol, which protects customers with pre-booked holidays from being stranded abroad in the event of circumstances such as the company ceasing to trade.
Mr Nimmo told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that the administrators were considering breaking up the company as no buyer has been found to purchase Monarch in its entirety.
He said: "While there have been some expressions of interest, in reality no offers for the business as a whole have been forthcoming, so we now are looking for who might be interested in certain parts of business, whether it be physical assets or whether it be slots, i.e. routes that they currently operate."
On the prospect of job losses, he said that because of the timing of the announcement, staff have not yet been spoken to about their futures.
"We have not spoken to the staff, we have people at all the major sites from KPMG this morning and we are going to... explain to them exactly where we are with them at the moment and where things are going to move going forward, what their rights and statutory rights are in these circumstances. That should become clearer over the next few hours."
Mr Nimmo explained that Monarch had been "significantly loss-making" over the last year and those losses were projected to continue in the year ahead.
In the last year the airline had taken 14% more customers but revenue was £100 million less, while adverse movement of the pound against the dollar had increased costs including fuel, handling charges and lease payments.
He said affected customers currently abroad will "broadly" get home when they were anticipating and "in a similar manner" and urged them to check the website.
