Friday, September 12, 2008


European Airline XL Folds, Stranding Thousands of Travelers
September 12, 2008, 12:10 pm
Posted by Matt Phillips

Passengers pass an XL Airways advert at Gatwick Airport in London Friday.
It’s been a bad day for some British holidaymakers.


European budget carrier and holiday operator XL Leisure Group became the latest casualty of high fuel prices and the downturn in consumer spending, when it fell into administration today — that’s British for bankruptcy — and canceled all flights.

Agence France Presse pegs the number of stranded passengers at 85,000 worldwide. Dow Jones puts it at 67,000. The Daily Mail puts that figure at 100,000, mainly in the US, the Caribbean and the Mediterranean.

XL’s collapse follows the recent failure of other foreign airlines. Early this week Spain’s Futura International filed for bankruptcy-like protections and last month Zoom Airlines, a Canadian carrier, was shuttered.

Stateside, airlines have had their fair share of problems over the last few years. But even when they invoke bankruptcy protections — as Delta, Northwest and United parent UAL all did earlier this decade — they managed to keep operating and avoid the widespread stranding of passengers.

But if flights did come to a shuddering halt, as Skybus and Aloha Airlines did in recent months, this column by Scott McCartney reminds travelers that the same high costs hammering some airlines into Chapter 11 also make solvent carriers more reluctant to take on stranded ticket holders.

McCartney writes:
That is a big change for consumers. They used to be able to buy tickets on struggling airlines with reasonable expectations that either the airline would keep flying if it went bankrupt, or other airlines would honor tickets for a small fee. Now, consumers need to be far more careful in picking airlines, especially for tickets bought months in advance.


For those who have been caught up in the XL situation, the British Civil Aviation Authority — sort of similar to the FAA — is working with other tourism companies and airlines to arrange flights back to Britain, according to the Guardian.

(The left-leaning British paper also has a pretty good video on the subject, here.) American travelers, would you expect the FAA to step in and help handle mass strandings of Americans abroad if a well-known carrier went belly-up?

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