Saturday, December 19, 2009

Unfortunate failure of flyGlobspan



An operation is under way to fly the thousands of people back to the UK left stranded after Flyglobespan, Scotland's biggest airline, collapsed.
About 800 jobs are under threat and unions have expressed anger at the plight of employees.
About 4,500 passengers were stranded by the airline's collapse, mostly in Spain, Portugal, Cyprus and Egypt.
Finance Secretary John Swinney has said that collapsed Scottish airline was "badly let down" by a company handling its credit bookings. Flyglobespan was owed £34m by E-Clear, the company which processed its credit card payments, £20m of this was for passengers who had already flown.
The finance secretary said it was "beyond dispute" the money should have been in Flyglobespan's bank account.
He added the company would have had "a better chance of survival" if the money had been passed on to Globespan.

Earlier this week, Globespan's chief executive, founder and chief shareholder, Tom Dalrymple, issued a couple of statements saying the airline management continued to be in discussion with a company called Halcyon Investments, about an injection of capital.
Halcyon had been in discussions with flyGlobespan going back at least as far as September, which was around the point when others who were interested in investing in the airline pulled out.