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business Essential news, comment and analysis


‘When an airline such as Monarch collapses, you have one or two hours to prevent [airport] chaos,’ says the


DfT’s Eirik Pitkethly


Fear of Monarch ‘chaos’ spurred CAA repatriation


Department for Transport official justifies government decision to fly home Brits stranded abroad by airline’s collapse in October. Ian Taylor reports


The government ordered the CAA to repatriate all Monarch passengers when the airline failed in October because it feared “chaos” at airports across Europe.


Eirik Pitkethly, deputy director


for aviation strategy at the Department for Transport (DfT), justified the repatriation and joined CAA head of Atol Andy Cohen in defending the £250-per-head cost of bringing passengers home. Pitkethly said: “About 100,000 people were stuck abroad with


88 travelweekly.co.uk 18 January 2018


limited prospect of using existing scheduled capacity to get back. One of the biggest impacts of not doing anything would have been chaos.” He told a Hill Dickinson travel


law seminar: “A big consideration was ‘how do we ensure this doesn’t turn into a riot in 30-odd airports around Europe and threaten the safety and wellbeing of a lot of people?’ Against that background was the moral hazard: what happens if we undermine the protection system? “Until the company actually


entered administration, the government couldn’t act because to do so might precipitate the failure. Our hands were tied. There was not enough time to get people around the table to discuss it.” Pitkethly added: “Once it has happened, you have one or two hours to prevent chaos. People start turning up at airports at 5am or 6am in the morning.” Cohen said the government considered the repatriation “very carefully”. He said: “There was an analysis of the capacity available to UK residents at the time of failure and it wasn’t pretty. It was nowhere near enough to bring people home. That framed the


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