Showing posts with label Monarch. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Monarch. Show all posts

08 December, 2017

SKYCOP demands Monarch Airlines give slot deal money to passengers

The collapse of one of the UK's longest running airlines, Monarch, sent shock waves throughout the travel industry. Its demise left thousands of passengers overseas and many more thousands of future holidaymakers plans in doubt.  The CAA mobilised a massive airlift operation to bring back Monarch passengers in a repatriation the size of which had not been seen since the war. 

The administrators, KPMG, appointed to realise the most possible return for Monarch's assets and redistribute those funds to all the airlines' creditors managed to sell a large number of Monarch's lucrative slots. 

The sale has, according to Lithuanian based compensation chasers Skycop, 'sparked outrage among passengers left stranded or without holidays by the airline collapse, the majority of whom are yet to receive any flight compensation', which, again according to Skycop,, is around €291 million.

We spoke to five people who were affected by the Monarch collapse and none were 'outraged', they understood that it was the administrators' job to get as much money as possible by selling Monarch's assets before they are able to distribute any of that cash to staff, customers and all the other creditors. 

It should also be worth pointing out that nobody was left stranded overseas, all Monarch passengers were brought home by one of the many airlines the CAA had hired to operate those repatriation flights.  

28 November, 2017

British Airways Bulk Buy Monarch's Slots At Gatwick As Level Goes To Paris

British Airways have beaten low-cost rivals EasyJet and Norwegian in the rush to snap up the slots at London Gatwick Airport vacated by the bankrupt Monarch Airlines.  

Whilst the exact number of slots and the true price paid hasn't been released or reported at the present time, it is understood to be just under £50 million. It is also believed that not all the slots will be used by British Airways, a number are expected to be allocated to Level, the new low-cost, long-haul airline IAG set up in June.

Level started flying in the summer from Barcelona to Los Angeles, San Francisco, Buenos Aires and Punta Canan, with new routes due to be announced soon. IAG also revealed today that Level's next base opening with be Orly Airport in Paris. The carrier will base two A330's at Orly and fly to Montreal, New York, Guadeloupe and Martinique from July next year, with fares starting from €99 one way, plus charges and fees.

Willy Walsh the IAG boss said: "Barcelona operation has been an incredible success. Customers love it and Level will be profitable this year. Barcelona was always a first step and today we’re delighted to launch flights from our second European city with four exciting new routes from Paris."

Route start dates - 
Flights to Montreal start on 2nd July 2018  three times per week.
Flights to Guadeloupe start on 3rd July 2018 four times per week.
Flights to Martinique start on  3rd September 3 2018 three times per week.
Flights to New York (Newark) start on 4th September 2018 four times per week.






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17 November, 2017

KPMG allowed to sell Monarch's slots


When Monarch Airlines went bust in October many airlines expressed an interest in buying the collapsed airlines slots at Luton and Gatwick airports.  Those little allocations of runway time were perhaps one of the airlines most valuable assets, running with an estimated value of around £60 million.

The carriers administrators KPMG had initially lost a High Court battle to be able to sell the Monarch’s airport slots earlier this month. However, they appealed and confirmed yesterday that the appeal to sell those high-priced slots had been won.

KPMG said in a statement “We are delighted with the ruling and are very grateful to the court for dealing urgently with both the initial hearing and our appeal. We will now progress the slot exchange transactions we have underway, whose buyers will be announced at completion".
 
Whilst the ability to sell the slots is significant,  there is still no news on when or how much creditors will get back. "We must stress there will be no immediate distributions to any creditors; indeed our statutory proposals to creditors summarising the status of the administrations have not yet been published," he said, but added: "The significance of today’s ruling for both the airline and restructuring industries cannot be underestimated".






This article was written for this site by a member of our team 🙋, please do share it with your friends via social media. You are also welcome to post it or republish elsewhere on the 🌎web on the condition that you credit the author and link back to our site. Thank you.

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03 October, 2017

Monarch boss says he's devastated and Norwegian stay silent on take-over talks

The boss of Monarch,  chief executive Andrew Swaffield told the BBC he is "absolutely devastated" at the collapse of his airline, Monarch.  Speaking on Today he confirmed the decision cease trading was made late on Saturday night after the company estimated its losses for 2018 would be "well over £100m".

The management team could think of a way to stem those losses significantly, either by selling the short-haul airline or improve it. He confirmed that they had sought expert advice, but they still couldn't figure out a way to save the company.  He told how the UK's insolvency rules wouldn't have allowed the airline to continue to fly, in a similar fashion to Air Berlin and Alitalia, who are both bankrupt but flying with government loans, whilst officials try to find buyers. He said the airline had spoken to various people to try and save the airline, but no options became available. It's believed those talks included calls to rival airlines such as Easyjet, Wizz, Norweigan and Ryanair over buying all or part of the company. 

02 October, 2017

CAA launches flying programme to bring 110,000 customers back to UK in response to Monarch Airlines administration


The UK's Civil Aviation Authority confirms that Monarch Airlines has ceased trading with immediate effect, leaving 110,000 customers overseas and in the region of 300,000 future bookings cancelled.

The government has asked CAA to charter more than 30 aircraft to bring back to the UK Monarch Airlines customers currently overseas, which it has already started to do with Qatar Airways being the main supplier of aircraft, with 10 already in operation on the repatriation operation.  The estimated cost of this, the largest peacetime repatriation, in British history is expected to be £60 million according to the CAA.  

The CAA is warning Monarch customers in the UK and yet to travel to not go to the airport, there will not be any more flights from the airline.  Those customers already overseas due to fly in the next fortnight will be brought back to the UK at no cost to them. There is no need to cut short your stay and are advised to check new special website monarch.caa.co.uk for more information.


All future Monarch Airlines bookings, including flights and holidays, have now been cancelled following a decision by the company's board to stop trading.  This is the UK's largest ever airline to enter administration. 

The silent demise of Monarch as they slip into administration in the dead of night.

Monarch Airlines has ceased trading and slipped into administration in the middle of the night. The first official announcement came from an email sent to staff from Andrew Swaffield, who apologised and praised the owners  - read the full email here.




The email reads,  his is the update I hoped I would never have to write. Despite our best efforts, today Monarch Airlines Limited and Monarch Travel Group (Monarch Holidays) are ceasing operations and going into administration.

Soon you will hear from the administrator, KPMG, who will now be running these two entities in administration and will explain what this means for all of us who work for either company.

Please note that Monarch Aircraft Engineering Limited continues to operate normally and is not entering administration.

Our owners, Greybull Capital, showed great courage when they bought us in 2014 and have provided us with continuous support.  We had a turnaround year in 2015.

But since then, outside influences have badly affected us. Since 2015 we’ve seen yields collapse by a quarter, resulting in £160 million less revenue.

This has especially affected Spain and Portugal which is 80% of our business. This year the airline is carrying 14% more passengers than last year for £100m less revenue.

The root cause is the closure, due to terrorism, of Sharm-El- Sheikh and Tunisia and the decimation of Turkey.

Despite these challenges we managed to cut £40 million out of our cost base by reducing overheads and being more efficient and wasting less, however the yield reductions have turned our airline from one that made £70 million profit in 2015 to one that made a £60 million loss in 2017 and was scheduled to lose over £100 mililon in 2018.

We asked a respected aviation consulting firm to review how we could improve our short haul network and they came to the conclusion that it was pretty much out of our control.

The email continues -

01 October, 2017

CAA charter Qatar & other aircraft to rescue Monarch passengers should last ditch talks fail

The UK's Civil Aviation Authority is in the process of arranging repatriation flights for thousands of Monarch passengers should the airlines holiday arm not receive its new ATOL licence.  The company was given a one-day extension on Saturday night of its existing licence as it continues emergency talks with the regulator.

There is great concern that the UK's fifth largest airline may not survive the coming week should the CAA refuse the application.  It is believed that the company would be left with little option other than to call in the administrators on Monday afternoon for its package holiday arm if left without a licence which could stand up to 100,000 holidaymakers overseas.

“Our flights are operating as normal, carrying Monarch customers as scheduled. Our ATOL licence – for packaged holidays – is with the regulator. Flight only bookings do not require an ATOL licence, in line with other airlines,” a Monarch spokesman said.

18 September, 2017

Monarch In Review

Monarch Airlines are working hand in hand with KPMG on a review of the airline which could see the holiday airline radically transformed. 

The airline is already in talks with regulators Civil Aviation Authority regarding its Air Travel Organiser's Licence (ATOL)  and is looking at a major restructuring of its European operations as looking further afield. 

According to media speculation, Monarch is looking to greatly expand long-haul operations to compensate for the poor profits on European routes due to increased levels of competition and budget airlines price wars. One of the other options thought to be under consideration include an arrangement with another, bigger, long-haul airline that Monarch would work as a feeder for.  Another tie-up could be with one of the low-cost airlines like Jet2 or EasyJet.  

12 August, 2017

Gatwick - UK's Worst Airport For Delays

Photo J Milstein  Gatwick Airport

THE World's busiest single runway airport and the second busiest in the UK, Gatwick, has been named as the worst for delays in the country. 


Passengers departing from the Sussex/Surrey airport suffered the longest average delays of 27 minutes, during summer getaways, according to a BBC analysis of figures collated by the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA).

These figures were collected during the last two summers (June to August) and combined to reveal the typical delays. It is perhaps no surprise that the airline with the longest delay was the budget carrier EasyJet. On average their passengers experience delays of 24 minutes when taking all summer flights into consideration, whether delayed or not. An EasyJet spokeswoman claimed "EasyJet operates the largest number of flights of any UK airline, flying over 78 million passengers per year. In 2017, EasyJet will operate 33% more flights than in 2011, with less than 0.8% delayed by more than three hours."

06 July, 2017

Monarch Launch Auctions For Extra Legroom Seats

Legroom....what legroom?
Passengers using budget airline Monarch will now be able to bid against each other if they are wanting to get a seat with extra legroom.

The airline launched two new features for passengers this week, one called the ‘extra comfort seat’ and the other ‘bid for extra legroom’ feature.

It will see customers battling it out online for extra spaces or upgraded seats making more money for the budget airline and increasing frustration for those unsuccessful in their bidding.

Customers will be able to purchase as many as two extra seats on flights, with the company claiming the policy will allow customers to “treat themselves to something better”.  Yet the cost of buying the extra seats is lightly to be one and a half times higher than the retail price.


04 July, 2017

New Routes For Monarch

Monarch is celebrating the launch of four new routes from Birmingham Airport – The UK airline now flies to Valencia in Spain, Split in Croatia, Naples in Italy and Rhodes in Greece from the midlands airport.

It has become the only airline and holiday company to take passengers from Birmingham to Valencia and Split.




David Winstanley, Chief Operating Officer at Birmingham Airport, and Ian Chambers, Chief Commercial Officer at Monarch, cut the paella cake

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