The government has denied that Monarch Airlines customers should have been warned of the carrier’s financial troubles in the runup to its collapse, as an operation began to repatriate 110,000 passengers.

Asked whether travellers should have been notified about over the problems – flights were still on sale at the weekend – a Department for Transport spokesperson said: “This was a decision made by the company and it is the job of directors and their advisers to decide when a business is no longer a going concern … It is the not the role of government to decide on the viability of a business.”

The DfT defended its actions as the Civil Aviation Authority, the airline industry watchdog, revealed it had been putting together contingency plans over the last four and a half weeks, but only had a “clear indication” that the UK’s fifth largest airline was about to go into administration late on Saturday night. Monarch’s administrators also revealed on Monday evening that more than 1,800 staff had been made redundant following the collapse.

Monarch passengers at Luton airport said they had checked in for their flights on Sunday, just before administrators grounded the airline at 4am on Monday. Hazel Henson, 47, said: “We checked in yesterday and when we got here this morning, just after 4am, my husband got an email saying, ‘Thank you for checking in.’”

Henson said her husband had paid about £270 for replacement flights with easyJet after airport staff initially told them to go home.“We didn’t want to ruin our holiday, and that’s why my husband has paid for more flights.”

The CAA said 110,000 customers would be brought home on specially chartered planes and a further 750,000 learned that their bookings have been cancelled.

The 4am announcement that Britain’s longest-surviving airline brand had been placed into administration meant that many passengers arrived at airports on Monday morning to find their flights cancelled and their holiday plans in tatters.

Monarch’s administrators confirmed on Monday night that 1,858 of the airline’s 2,100 employees had lost their jobs. “Regrettably, with the business no longer able to fly, a significant number of redundancies were made,” said joint administrator Blair Nimmo.

The first of more than 700 flights home in a £60m operation for the Civil Aviation Authority landed on Monday at Gatwick airport, carrying Monarch customers from Ibiza. The regulator has chartered 34 planes, including from easyJet and Qatar Airways, for the repatriation from destinations across Europe. It said all customers due to return to the UK in the next two weeks – even those without bookings protected under the Air Travel Organiser’s Licence (Atol) scheme – would be flown home at no extra cost and did not need to cut short their stay.

The CAA chief executive, Andrew Haines, said: “This is the biggest UK airline ever to cease trading, so the government has asked the CAA to support Monarch customers currently abroad to get back to the UK at the end of their holiday at no extra cost to them.

“We are putting together, at very short notice and for a period of two weeks, what is effectively one of the UK’s largest airlines to manage this task. We ask customers to bear with us as we work round the clock to bring everyone home.”

Customers affected by the company’s collapse were urged to check the dedicated website monarch.caa.co.uk for advice and information on flights back to the UK. The CAA said passengers would be brought home on flights as close as possible to their original times, dates and destination, but some consolidation, disruption and delay was inevitable.

Most are due to travel through Spanish airports, with 32,000 set to return this week from Spain and its islands, including more than 6,000 from Alicante and Malaga, and almost 5,300 from Palma de Mallorca and 4,400 from Tenerife. Nearly 10,000 people will be flown back by Friday from Portugal, the majority from Faro.

But passengers yet to travel could could be hit harder. Haines said it was a “very mixed picture” for the 300,000 outstanding bookings, affecting a total of 750,000 customers due to leave the UK in the coming weeks and months.



He said close to 50% of Monarch passengers were believed to have some form of Atol protection, and Haines said most of the others should receive refunds on their flights through credit or debit card providers. However, customers who booked accommodation separately may struggle to reclaim their other holiday costs, with many travel insurers excluding airline failure from their policies.



Commenting on the “extraordinary operation”, the transport secretary, Chris Grayling, said: “This is a hugely distressing situation for British holidaymakers abroad – and my first priority is to help them get back to the UK. That is why I have immediately ordered the country’s biggest ever peacetime repatriation to fly about 110,000 passengers who could otherwise have been left stranded abroad.”

The taxpayer will meet the initial cost of the repatriation, although the government hopes to recoup much of that sum from the Atol protection scheme and credit card payment companies.

Monarch, whose headquarters are at London Luton airport, was founded in 1968. It operates from four other UK bases – London Gatwick, Manchester, Birmingham and Leeds Bradford – travelling to more than 40 destinations around the world. The company employs about 2,750 predominantly UK-based staff, and all but about 600 people working in its engineering division, MAEL, will be affected.

Monarch enjoyed a good reputation for customer service, but its long-term future rarely looked assured. In 2014, its Swiss family owners sold the company to the investment firm Greybull Capital, a deal that resulted in airline staff being forced to agree to pay cuts.

Greybull said the airline had been “buffeted by factors outside of its control”. Terrorism and the collapse of the pound after the Brexit vote were the two main factors, it said.

Two of Monarch’s biggest markets, in Egypt and Tunisia, were closed to tourists after terrorist attacks. The Foreign Office advised against travel to Tunisia and Egypt’s Red Sea resorts after the shooting in Sousse and the bombing of a Russian airliner in 2015, stopping charter flights from the UK.