110,000 holidaymakers stranded as Monarch Airlines collapses

Blair Nimmo, Jim Tucker and Mike Pink from KPMG have been appointed joint administrators to Monarch Airlines. At the same time Nimmo, Tucker and Steve Absolom from KPMG have been appointed joint administrators to Monarch Travel Group.

The group’s engineering operation, Monarch Aircraft Engineering, is not in administration and continues to trade normally.

Monarch Airlines is now no longer able to fly as its Air Operating Certificate has been suspended as a result of the insolvency.

All Monarch flights from the UK have been cancelled and will not be rescheduled. All flights to the UK today and for the next two weeks will be replaced with alternative flights, organised by the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) with assistance from the administrators – at no extra cost to consumers.

All future holidays booked with Monarch Travel Group are also cancelled with immediate effect.

Blair Nimmo, partner at KPMG, 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.”

KPMG is now focussing on customers due to travel within the next 48 hours and has asked customers who are travelling outside of that time period, to contact the CAA website with any queries, so that administrators can focus on the people travelling imminently.

Administrators will today be speaking to all of the group’s employees, and starting the process of returning the group’s leased aircraft fleet to its owners.

The government has also pointed Monarch employees, a total of around 2,100 people, to a guide on how to claim redundancy payments after the insolvency.