Buy Abroad News

17 Dec 09

Flyglobespan Goes In To Administration Leaving Expats Stranded

As if the news that expats and holiday makers in Spain, Portugal and Cyprus might be caught out by the British Airways strike was not enough, we wake up this morning to news that the Scottish based airline FlyGlobeSpan has gone in to administration.

The company operates ten aircraft and covers routes to Cyprus, Spain Egypt and Portugal. Many people will find themselves stranded at airports all over Europe as the administrators KPMG tries to deal with the fallout from the companies collapse.

On the Flyglobespan web site this morning was the following statement.

"Bruce Cartwright, Graham Frost and Ian Oakley-Smith at PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) have been appointed as joint administrators to Scottish travel firm, The Globespan Group plc and Alba Ground Handling Ltd (‘the Group’) on 16 December 2009. It is likely that other Group companies including the airline which operated as Flyglobespan will be placed into administration on 17 December 2009.

The companies entered into Administration having suffered liquidity issues.

Unfortunately, the Joint Administrators have been unable to continue trading the companies and therefore all flights operated by The Globespan Group plc or Globespan Airlines Ltd have been cancelled and the aircraft grounded".

Travellers, who have booked in advance, have been advised that they should be able to claim a refund via the ATOL scheme. However this is likely to only apply to people who have booked a package. Anyone who booked just a flight, are unlikely to qualify for a refund and their only hope of getting their money back will be if they paid using their credit card.

David Hammond from Buy Abroad commented “this is yet another blow for the many Brits who live abroad hoping to fly home for Christmas. Most people book their tickets well in advance and to find that the rug has effectively been pulled from under their feet just before Christmas, is going to upset a lot of people” .