Originally Posted by
Kolossi
So let me get this straight...
When ATOL membership is applied for/renewed it provides a handy health-check on the financial health of the organisation. I've no idea if that health-check is over-zealous.
As part of the shenanigans around Monarch's renewal it seems it was not passing the health-check. The action of failing to renew the membership would itself be a fatal financial blow to the company in terms of lost future bookings. Maybe that was justified I don't know.
But despite all the publicity and common sense, a small minoritybooked without having ATOL airline failure protection insurance for their flight.
So you're suggesting 95% is a small minority?
HM Gov decided to repatriate them anyway on the basis they would try to hit the insurance card companies for the cost.
What's an insurance card?
I think you mean credit card.
And if the government doesn't, the consumer will. Hence the CAA asking people to sign forms allowing them to act om their behalf.
(That's because of a quirk of the consumer credit act, which says if you are sold a loan to buy a product, then you shouldn't have to repay the loan if you don't get delivered the product. Originally designed to protect consumers from bad hire-purchase agreements, it inadvertantly caught credit card companies too.)
Since it only covers credit and not debit cards, if the CAA didn't step in you'd find some consumers ******, some covered by ATOL, and some able to claim from their credit card company. Consumers - likely as ill informed as you - may find this fairly arbitrary; it seems completely laudable therefore for the government/CAA to step in and say "we'll get you home and deal with the mess." Surprisingly laudable.
So the airline failed because it couldn't renew its membership of an insurance scheme that the government then said "ah don't worry about that".
It failed because it wasn't a going concern. The fact it couldn't even afford to stump up the bond for an insurance scheme that only covered 5% of its business revealed this, it didn't cause it.
Should Mr & Mrs Holidaymaker from Huddersfield be left high and dry because they didn't have insurance. Erm.. yes, that's how insurance works. If not, surely the rest of us who have paid the premiums in our flight prices have been missold the need for the policy and should have the charges refunded? (No, I don't really think that's going to happen
)
You didn't pay in your flight price. If you bought a package holiday, you paid in the cost of that for coverage of your holiday. Since most people who don't live in a caravan don't book package holidays any more, and since travel insurance rarely covers insolvency, there is indeed an argument that ATOL solves yesterday's problems and we need something better... But it's hard to see how that can be used as a criticism for the government actually doing something right for once.