Originally Posted by
rog747
If the airline has no money and basically facing insolvency how can it be allowed to sell tickets?
Can the CAA can pull the plug ?
Yes and no. From an airline perspective they can withdraw or suspend the AOC. However, to do that the airline has to have violated the terms of the AOC. One of these is that it must be run by 'competent' persons. The exact definition of which I am not entire sure on. However, the current management has been deemed competent in the past and to deem them non-competent would not be trivial. However, one quick way to end up being controlled by non-competent persons is to go into administration. This is what happened to Monarch, the airline. For holiday companies the ATOL rules are different and that license can be suspended/non-renewed for different reasons. In Monarch's case when the CAA declined to renew the ATOL license that cut off the vast majority of the groups revenue stream and with it the airlines revenue stream. Hence why both went into administration, causing the AOC to be suspended, which is why the CAA had to charter non Monarch aircraft to repatriate holiday makers. Flybe isn't beholden to ATOL sales revenue so there is not that cliff edge. As long as they can obtain funding to keep paying their bills they can operate indefinitely. However, it looks like is has gotten really hard to obtain that funding.