From what I have seen, Monarch Arline is saying they are financially strong. What they have not said is whether Moarch Holdings and/or Monarch holidays are also.


Time will tell, but what I suspect we are seeing is a possible shutdown of the Holidays operation and a need to repatriate rapidly due to suppliers such as hôtels not being paid (possibly with outstanding debts), and the airline being unable to provide the adequate additional capacity to cover all routes.


If this is the case then it leads to an interesting question of the responsibilities when the Holiday part of a holding folds (or is folded) yet the airline part continues to operate. Indeed, it would be interesting to know at what price the Holiday arm is billed for the airline flights, and when i.e. have they already been paid for the return seats?


As to the role of internet and in particular blogs, yes it accélérâtes communication, but it is not like the planes flown in are done so by stealth and it is difficult to hide a 747 on an airport from anyone who is half-trying to be observant. The risk is that posters do not make it clear as to what is fact and what is supposition or even totally unfounded. Wikipédia requires cross-references to establish where the information was sourced.

A correction to my post above: it seems that it is Monarch Holdings who say they are financially strong and not the airline division, although I believe I have seen a post saying that the airline has been the largest contributor to profit in the recemt past.


My apologies for the misinformation.

Very easy, they were seen checking in and out of one of the Manchester airport hotels and the sign in sheet clearly said United crew.

Well if holiday part was to close down they would just stop selling package holidays and by October 2017 that part of the business would be gone.
Still struggling as to why the company would want the brand to suffer.

As for management they should have just said the ATOL is paid end of story but they haven't.

Feel sorry for the crews that are reading this but if I was monarch crew I would be worried too it's not a nice thing to have to go through.
Hard to try and do you daily job excellent for pax with this all going on

United airlines crew check into hotels on a daily basis at manchester guven that united fly in daily. They also check into heathrow hotels, birmingham hotels, newcastle etc etc ...

Thats hardly evidence!!

There were 20 odd of them got off yesterdays inbound as passengers rather than ending their shift working the inbound flight, as 20 odd went the opposite way.

That said although I believe they did arrive for "just in case" purposes I do fully believe they will not be needed and MON will announce any time license renewed....the sooner the better.

Expected renewal date is tomorrow - not expecting any news before then.

I'm 90% certain they'll get the green light from the CAA!

Brinkmanship like this does not inspire my confidence in the management of Monarch or the airlines future stability.

There is some strange 'head in sand' spotter nonsense on here! Having spoken to my mates in Monarch, I can assure you they are aware of the risks and now know 'something' serious is still ongoing!

FACT: aircraft & crews in the UK are/have been on standby for over 7 days now, payed for!

As Kyle has said, Friday will no doubt reveal lots more and I hope to god a solution, I'm also 90% sure Monarch will be operating on Saturday.

There's still over 7 aircraft on standby across Europe, with crews in place to operate these flights (United 744 crew at MAN included). There's more than Just United/Omni/Air Transat included in these rescue flights, which it seems no one has noticed yet.

ATOL deadline day is tomorrow for deposits with the CAA.

There seems to be a complete misunderstanding of the issues.
As a retired senior airline executive , I would like to add my ideas.
1. Monarch ( ATOL) is still selling package holidays, to repatriate these pax
will take some weeks if the ATOL is cancelled at midnight tomorrow.
2. If the ATOL is cancelled there is nothing to prevent the airline (ZB)
TO FLY as a lowcost carrier , providing the Airline is not in breach of
its AOC and a sound business plan is in place.
.
The percentage split flight only against tour operating is of course the key.
Maybe someone should look at Companies House to check latest
filings. ( Airline and Monarch Holidays ).
If the Package side is dropped I am sure a light weight cost Carrier can rise
from the ashes.
THE AIRLINE IS TOO GOOD TO VANISH.

Still struggling why they changed the name to monarch from cosmos holidays though if the plan was to sell the holiday side

Warrior28


I have read in this thread or from Monarch that over 6m pax are carried of which about 800000 are as part of the Holidays operation. I have not been able to ascertain whether these are one-way or round-trips but whatever, it looks as if Holidays is probably about 15% of pax carried.


Also, I have no idea how average revenue from a holidays pax compares with a seat-only ticket so revenue per market could be higher or lower in the above percentage terms.


Monarch was very clear in the past that they wanted to evolve into a scheduled carrier and I believe have done what was needed to structure costs in line with expected revenus, so yes, dropping holidays could actually strengthen the group in the long term (at least on a unit-margin basis). What was perhas an error was to rebrand Cosmos as Monarch Holidays which, if closed or spun-off, could indeed do the brand short-term damage if it is not handled well.

Just checked CAA stats.
Total Group authorised ( First Aviation/Cosmos/Avro) C 2.75 M pax , so maybe 800,000
on low side or they have over estimated their bonding requirements ???

Do they not need:

1 - An ATOL bond for package holidays
2 - A bond against the OL which is determined by a liquidity check completed by ERG at the CAA ???

I thought those not operating charters or scheduled flights still require a bond for Type A licences regardless ? or if you pay the ATOL you don't need an AOC/OL bond ? I.E 3 months of working capital and no income or thereabouts ?

Warrior28


Which year was that?


However, the plot thickens as when I search Cosmos Holidays I get "Holiday Hypermarket" which is a TUI subsidiary, although it states that Cosmos is now Monarch Holidays. Is Holiday Hypermarket just a shop for other's Holidays or do they need an ATOL? Is Globus still involved?

Also, what is the role of First Aviation as, although it appears under the Monarch (Holdings?) brand, it appears to lease capacity only to tour operators. As it doesn't appear to be an airline, presumably it is operating as a kind of broker or possibly intermediary. Indeed, do some/all Monarch Holidays seats go through First Aviation and thus may not be on Monarch Airlines flights?

Regardless of legal entities and minimum requirements, if Monarch can't sort out the ATOL point within 24 hours, its brand is knackered.

The last press release by them was Monday, it's now Thursday night and the funding is still not sorted. I would hope it would be done tonight as everyone will be getting very tired, or a sale announced.

Does anyone know if these suspected CAA chartered aircraft are still in resort?

Yes they are. Let's hope they won't be needed, tomorrow will tell.

The Cosmos brand could only be used a certain amount of time as a condition of sale by the Mantegazzas after the 2014 restructure.

As for Monarch's flights being 20-30% more expensive that FR or easy, that is nonsense by that "analyst" - Monarch's prices are led by the two bigger rivals and there is only a small premium you can charge extra before people just won't pay it. Monarch's EBITDAR is one of the most competitive of any airline in the world, and is a measure of the efficiency of the airline in controlling its costs, which are comparable with FR and easy. The difference is cash - both FR and easy have huge cash piles, whereas Monarch's is more modest - it takes years of profitablility to build these up, and this has been a difficult year because of Brexit (exchange rate hit) and terrorism (e.g. Sharm and Turkey issues leading to oversupply on Spain, etc with only a fixed amount of accom there).

Monarch do hedge fuel substantially again now, although it's true that as part of the 2014 sale the then in-place hedges had to be unwound, hence there was fortunate timing for Greybull when the price subsequently dropped. Hedging protects you from increases in the oil price, hence why any sound management would re-hedge as cash becomes available.

For those not aware the CAA seeks a bond (cash or equivalent) from the airline for an ATOL certificate and from its point of view it wants that bond to be as high as possible since it retains it if the airline goes under. The airline/shareholders would argue that they have better uses for the cash and so seek to minimise the bond in those negotiations. It may be that this year the CAA are being more cautious with terrorism and Brexit risks as it sees them, and you never actually know what is going to be asked for until you get in the room with all the interested parties and their advisors.

Just had a email from monarch advertising flights for next year? Let's just hope everything is ok would not like see anyone loose there job

Interesting post rushed approach , Nice To read something from someone whom appears to know a little about what they are talking about

I use both monarch and easyjet and have to say there is never much in the pricing betwixt the two

Have recently used Monarch on a return trip to TFS as they were considerably cheaper than Ryanair and I could understand all cabin and flight deck announcements in proper English.

Yes they always provide a great service I have to say They somehow seem a little bit more upmarket than the others

Fingers crossed. My personal, unfounded opinion is that a business without an ATOL licence is going to be a lot cheaper than one with and so a bunch of canny suits will be happy to let it fail.

Anyone tell me how many aircraft MON have based at BHX? And if possible the break down of A320/321's? Thanks in advance.

The ATOL question
 

Think people are getting confused about the ATOL. "Normally" airlines do not require ATOL licences to sell seats, only if they add another component, effectively making it a holiday. However I belive the reason the ATOL for First Aviation is so large is because of the near failure a couple of years back of ZB, the CAA insisted Monarch had an ATOL licence in place due to the size of the risk of their failure to consumers. Effectively they had to join the ATOL scheme for every single seat sold, I guess because their balance sheet was shot to bits and therefore would not have met the criteria to hold an AOC due to financial fitness. This is why he ATOL is so pivotal in all of this, because if due to ongoing concerns about financial fitness the CAA do not feel they can issue a renewal, then It would be game over. No ATOL no fly, AOC revoked and that's it. I can only assume there is a game of brinkmanship going on and perhaps that lays at the door of the management, who have been saying for some time they need cash, else they can't get through the winter with a notion that "it'll be alright as Greybull will step if if nobody else does" maybe, just maybe Greybull have already filled their boots and don't want to be last chance saloon, when they've already maybe had their pound of flesh and maybe the management sat on their laurels not being concerned that nobody else (buyer, lender or institution) would put their hands in their pockets because good old Greybull would step up to the plate and maybe, just maybe Greybull don't want to and hence why the CAA are spooked. Seems to me that although CAA may have jumped the gun on the actions it looks like they have taken, maybe there was (and remains) good reason for them taking the decision - if nothing else it's probably brought the whole thing to a head. I feel for the staff but by the looks of it, since the management recognised the cash flow hole some time back, their lack of visibility to the regulator on how the hole would be filled is quite probably the cause of all this. Let's hope there is a white knight out there, but whatever happens the same will play out this time next year too. EBITDAR is all well and good but for all we know the "I" in EBITDAR on loan payments to Greybull or depreciation might more than wipe out the £40m reported EBITDAR.

Rushed Approach, Would be interested on your thoughts on this... Monarch is quite unique now in selling seat only online with bonding under an ATOL. Is this a requirement imposed on them? (as this adds £2.50 to the selling price). Could they consolidate under one ATOL to reduce cost?

ATOL and EBITDAR
 

Remember in this game cash is king

3x A320 & 7x A321 (one A321 on Standby).

Schedule in for both of the united 747's to go to Frankfurt Hahn tomorrow as UA2140/2141

Military trooping flights?

Unlikely they would use Rhine Main AB

Dear Guardian,


Are you sure about what you have written? Are you refering to an operating licence for Monarch Airline or the ATOL for Monarch Holidays?

Confusion reigns.
I do not think that Monarch scheduled flights are covered by ATOL. An ATOL certificate must be issued at the time of booking and certainly this has not happened on my next three bookings. From memory ATOL certificates have not been issued for over a year.
Bookings with Avro are covered by ATOL. Bookings for flight plus accommodation are covered by ATOL. Packages are covered by ATOL.

I don't know what they are, there are still schedules for flights to the UK too.

As a bit of coincidental irony, given their current positions, I found this paragraph on the telegraph website (from 27 March this year):

A spokesman for Monarch denied that there is a "sale process" underway but said, "Monarch has sought the assistance of Deutsche Bank who will look at both inbound and outbound opportunities."

Such a difficult time for all, compounded by the fact that negative trading publicity will impact credit terms with suppliers, fuel companies, handling agents, airports etc. Have been there before and thankfully came out the other side. Have to say there are people on this thread that need to look at themselves in the mirror. You may discover that there is no depth to shallowness. Best of luck to all at Monarch, I know it's not easy!