Several weeks ago the subject of MyTravel was brought up at our annual Company Briefing made by our DFO and Chief Pilot. The DFO mentioned that the rumour at board level was that the CAA was ready to call in MyTravel's ATOL bond in April of this year. However, the Transport Secretary stepped in to prevent this as the demise of the MyTravel at that time would be seen as a high profile casualty of the Iraq 'war' and would be disastrous
PR for the government. Consequently MyTravel was allowed to carry on trading and apparently pay a reduced bond to the CAA. This has been viewed as unfair competition by other tour operators who have made representations to the CAA objecting to this.
Government involvement seemed to be backed up by this paragraph from the lead story in the Manchester Evening News whose headline shouts "Travel giant hit by £900m losses":
"Andrew Monk, of the London firm Oriel Securities said he believed Transport Secretary Alistair Darling may have stepped in to help prevent the company collapsing and avoid the headache of having thousands of UK holiday- makers stranded abroad."
I thought that's what the ATOL bond was for. However, can anyone substantiate these rumours and also explain what role the CAA plays in a situation like this?