Britain's Monarch Airlines collapsed on Monday, stranding more than 100,000 travelers abroad after it fell victim to intense competition for flights to holiday destinations in Spain and Portugal.
The failure of Monarch, the largest British airline to go bust, will affect nearly 900,000 passengers in total and prompted the country's biggest peacetime repatriation effort.
Its demise added to turbulence in the European airline industry after Air Berlin and Alitalia filed for insolvency this year. Ryanair has also been forced to cancel thousands of flights because of problems finding enough pilots to fly them.
Shares of Monarch's rivals, easyJet, Ryanair and Wizz Air rose on Monday on the prospect of reduced competition and the chance to acquire some of its assets.
Monarch, based at Luton Airport north of London and in business since 1968, cancelled about 750,000 future bookings and apologized to customers and staff.
"I am so sorry that thousands now face a cancelled holiday or trip, possible delays getting home and huge inconvenience as a result of our failure," Monarch Chief Executive Andrew Swaffield told employees in a message.
"I am truly sorry that it has ended like this."
Monarch's finances 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 has also compounded its problems.
The airline was bailed out by its owner Greybull Capital a year ago.
"Monarch has really been a victim of a price war in the Mediterranean," Transport Secretary Chris Grayling told Sky News.
Grayling added that he expected many of Monarch's more than 2,000 staff to get jobs elsewhere.
"Monarch's problem was it was it was neither one thing nor the other. It was not really... a package holiday airline, nor was it really a low cost airline. I think it got rather squeezed in the middle," he added.
The British government has asked the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) to charter more than 30 aircraft to bring home about 110,000 Monarch customers currently overseas, the CAA said.
Monarch has seen market share slip in recent years with the rise of budget carriers. It was Britain's fifth largest airline, and according to Euromonitor International, held 1.7 percent of the UK airlines market in 2017, down from 2.6 percent in 2012.
The collapse of Monarch could benefit its rivals.
Monarch had previously said it was talking to potential partners after a report that parts of its short-haul network would be sold.
Analysts at broker Cantor Fitzgerald said that it was likely that easyJet would bid for some of Monarch's assets.
REUTERS
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