A number of airlines and travel companies have gone out of business recently, including Futura, Zoom Airlines, XL Airways and Seguro Holidays. XL Airways went into administration last Friday morning, annoyingly one day before my sister was supposed to be flying out (with them!) and about 85,000 were stranded overseas with no flight home.
Photo By Andrei Dimofte
Another 200,000 people lost their holidays or flights. If they booked a package holiday, most would have been covered for most or all of the price on their insurance but it will take up to six months to process all the claims.
Why is This Happening?
The credit crunch has a lot to do with it and it doesn’t help that 1,700 people who used to work for XL have suddenly lost their jobs. Now the other airlines have increased their prices so steeply that people who have existing hotel reservations will either lose their accommodation booking or be forced to pay the higher flight prices! And a lot of people just can’t afford that so their Canaria Gran tour looks like it’s cancelled.
Photo By Svenwerk
It’s also a shame about the other effects. Tourism is bound to take a nose dive if people can’t even afford to come here or if they lost their holiday and can’t afford a replacement until next year.
There are also those who won’t buy a holiday because they are scared of the same thing happening to them, whichever company they use. Some of the airlines on this page or this page might well go out of business next.
Have you lost your flight to Las Palmas Gran Canaria or do you know someone that has? Did you manage to rebook or did you lose your booking?
Latest News on Airlines:
SAS: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7612784.stm
AlItalia: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7615903.stm
More Information About XL Airways: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7612120.stm
We run a magazine site where we have a spain hotel review section http://www.in2town.co.uk and as such we have been receiving a huge amount of emails because of our hotel review section. This is due to the recent news of xl going bust and other travel companies going bust. People are very worried about booking a holiday with travel agents and those people who booked through the internet are now concerned that if anything happens to their travel agent that they will not be covered. What I cannot understand is why the larger companies are not making a public statement to put peoples minds at rest. If nothing is done by the other travel agents then their profits will go right down due to their potential customers being to scared to book holidays.
I think a lot of them are worried about making a public statement because even the larger airlines are struggling. I read yesterday that BA, Air France and Iberia might merge.
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