Andrew Swaffield on BBC’s Today programme - confirmed that next year’s projected loss was over £100m. Decision was made on Saturday night.

How gullible does he think people are?!
You don't knock up a website as thorough as the monarch CAA one in 24hrs or make extensive repatriation plans.
He just don't want to admit to spectacularly failing the staff & passengers.
What a little weasel Swaffield is.

Mr Swaffield was pretty distraught on the Radio I thought. I am sure he did what he could in the situation in which he found himself. I echo those comments about managers - as one who has had to instigate and oversee redundancy etc. I can say that not all are hard hearted s*ds.

In my view Monarch were just victims of the race to the bottom. I don't want to fly every week and do so once or twice a year for "pleasure" "these days- I do want to be comfortable and be looked after. Even that is more often than when I was a young father and Cromer or Penzance once a year was the norm. But I know a young person who has been to New York with Norwegian, and Geneva and Mikonos with Easy within the last few weeks!. It is just a cheap bus that people like her require.

Conflating the terms & meanings of "management" I feel....When most posters on here refer to or are "blaming" management for the debacle it is understood it would be accepted that that means the v man referred to above Mr S & Greybull..That`s what is meant & it is a wee bit precious of an earlier poster (LGS6753) to assume we refer to managers who perhaps run the day to day office...& BTW we do not appreciate being referred to as idiots.. Thank you..

I think Lassie's comments are grossly unfair. I suspect that Monarch and the CAA put the plan together as a contingency - it had to some extent been rehearsed last year I imagine. But trust me you are trying to find a solution until the very last minute - last year they did cut a deal - this year unfortunately it couldn't be done. I wonder if Lassie has even been confronted with a balance sheet that isn't going to add up - then told to sort it. Sometimes you can, sometimes you can't but there are always painful decisions to be made that will often adversely affect somebody else. Of course one is well paid to do this- otherwise you wouldn't do it.

No, not confronted with a balance sheet but a level of human compassion that people in that particular level of management do not possess. I personally know people affected by the job losses and I find it deceitful that the people at the coal face have been manipulated into believing that the balance sheet was good & that any announcements were likely to be favourable.....not catastrophic. You are, of course, entitled to your opinion. As am I.

I do have a GCE at "A" level with a grade A pass (when GCE's were really hard at "O", and the "A" level course was two years long) in Economics. Even I struggle with complex economic situations that lead to this type of demise. Throw in "creative accounting" and other issues like fuel hedging, liquidity ratio etc and you have a mind-dumbing mine field to navigate.

I was selected for a Monarch job in the late 60's and my mate & I puzzled through the Monarch history at Companies House, in London, as we had job offers from everyone (no, no boast, just that we were exactly what everyone was looking for at the time ).

Easy to source Britannia, Fred at Laker, Courtline etc etc. All seemed above board and transparent but we just could not get to bottom line ; who owns Monarch ?

Pretty young assistant laughed off our puzzlement, told us that it would be better to invest long term career interest in someone else as Monarch looked a bit "dodgy". That was decades ago. My mate & I went separate ways with separate companies.

Monarch appears to have lurched along all this time with highly questionable management practices and ideas. Even with my "A" at grade A, I find bottom line practices very hard to fathom.

I too was in Air Europe on the last day. I too have read the book (very hard to get hold of) but the final chapters on the economic issues leave me scratching my head.

Pilots fly the plane and we hope Managers , er, manage. I think we, pilots, have a better career history.

Very sad loss.For pilots , my career and therefore focus. It is cheering to see stacks of jobs out there. Said before, by me too, guys & gals, forget what is painted on the side of a plane and be loyal to your Licence. As a "Commercial Pilot", be commercial. Get out there And make it work for you .

Very good luck to a very talented and professional pilot group.

I'm not sure 'ironic' is the correct word, but I was at Monarch when they organised the repatriation of some 90k XL passengers...

Interesting those protecting the managers. If pilots get it wrong they often loose their lives along with their passengers. They accept that the buck stops with them & take responsibility for their actions. Managers do not pay with their lives for their mistakes, but the buck still stops with them. Managers should accept that whatever the circumstances they got it wrong and it is their fault. CEO's get paid enough to take that responsibility.

BBC says repatriation will cost £60 mil for 110,000 pax. That's an average of £545 per pax. Good job the CAA are not running an airline. They would go under before Monarch!

But but but.....Carney kept telling us the Pound was overvalued by 20% prior to 23rd June 2016 :rolleyes:

I guess the praise would be thrown around for any UK airline. Just a matter of more UK guys hanging out here than anyone else.
Plus, being soooo environmentalist, Germans appear to be almost happy about every airline that's going down...
Sarcastic? Maybe, but with a grain of salt.

Do we know what was based where in terms of the numbers ?

It does sound like a lot, but you would have to think that finding this amount of capacity at such short notice doesn't come cheap.

Presumably the operators providing this capacity will have also factored in empty leg/positioning costs to get the aircraft to and from where they're needed.

It seems that there has been some consolidation going on, for example, I understand that Wamos operated into MAN yesterday, with pax that originally departed from BHX and LBA being bussed to their original starting point.

I’d say LGW 10, BHX 9, MAN 9, LTN 5, LBA 2. But stand to be corrected..?

Jethros lists each aircraft with where it's parked

Generally speaking, the crew landing the aircraft were on board at wheels up, this is not the case here IMHO. Saying "this airline failed because of me" equates to "I am useless do not employ me." Management of any business is a team effort and with Monarch, there are more than a few people who made decisions which in hindsight got us here. Many are long since gone. That does not mean that Mr Swaffield should take the blame for administration. If any of us think we could have done this differently, time to take the GMAT and get that MBA to show the world.

LGW
1x A320 = G-ZBAU
8x A321 = G-OZBF, G-OZBH, G-OZBI, G-OZBN, G-OZBO, G-OZBT, G-ZBAJ, G-ZBAL
BHX
2x A320 = G-ZBAH, G-ZBAT
8x A321 = G-OZBE, G-OZBL, G-OZBM, G-OZBU, G-ZBAD, G-ZBAG, G-ZBAI, G-ZBAM
1x B738 = G-ZBAV
MAN
2x A320 = G-OZBW, G-OZBY,
7x A321 = G-OZBG, G-OZBR, G-OZBZ, G-ZBAE, G-ZBAF, G-ZBAK, G-ZBAO
LTN =
2x A320 = G-OZBX, G-ZBAS
2x A321 = G-MARA, G-OJEG
LBA
2x A320 = G-ZBAP, G-ZBAR

YL-LCP was also LGW Based at the time, however that has not been grounded and is operating repatriation flights.

How could Monarch possibly find a solution.. admitted in their satatement theybare to loose £60 million this year and £100 million next..no one's going to take those continuing losses on !