11 lakh passengers stranded overseas after British Monarch Airlines collapses

London, October 3: British Monarch Airlines collapsed on Monday, falling victim to intense flight competition for flights and a weaker pound. Thousands of flights were cancelled, affecting 9,00,000 passengers. The biggest ever failure of a British airline, Monarch’s shutting down left more than 1,00,000 tourists marooned abroad, Britain’s Civil Aviation Authority said on its website. It has prompted the country’s biggest peacetime repatriation effort.

 

Monarch’s collapse happened at a time when the availability of experienced pilots has been in focus, especially at low cost carriers, after Ryanair cancelled hundreds of thousands of flights due to issues with the rostering of pilots.

A spokeswoman for Virgin Atlantic said the airline had launched a fast-track application scheme with around 80 vacancies, about half of which it hoped to offer to Monarch first officers. “We’re looking for pilots to join our Airbus and 747 fleets, with a minimum experience of 2,500 hours total flying time and 500 hours on an Airbus or Boeing type,” she said.

Nearly 90% of Monarch’s 2,100 employees were laid off on Monday. The finances of Monarch, one of Britain’s biggest airlines, deteriorated in 2016, after security concerns deterred travel to Tunisia, Turkey and Egypt and brought increased capacity for routes to Iberia. The decline in the value of the pound made its problems worse, the report said. The airline was bailed out by its owner Greybull Capital a year ago.