XL Airways UK - Cessation of Operations

Cessation of Operations

On 11 September 2008, parent company XL Leisure Group filed for administration, although for some time the group's website continued taking bookings. The group later announced via their website that on 12 September 2008, 11 companies associated with the group had been put into administration, including XL Airways UK Limited. This did not affect the German and French divisions of the company's operations. The company issued the following statement: "The companies entered into administration having suffered as a result of volatile fuel prices, the economic downturn, and were unable to obtain further funding. The joint administrators cannot continue trading the business and therefore all flights operated by the companies have been immediately cancelled and the aircraft grounded;" XL Airline Germany and XL Airlines France have been bought out by another company and may come back in to full operation.

The airline left around 90,000 stranded passengers in 50 destinations across Europe, USA, the Caribbean and Africa. 63,000 of the stranded passengers were on package holidays, so were covered by the ATOL bond, which ensures paid-for repatriation. The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) chartered a number of aircraft from a variety of British airlines. One widely-reported Astraeus flight to Sharm el-Sheikh was flown by Iron Maiden lead singer Bruce Dickinson. Passengers who had booked direct, and were therefore not ATOL-protected, had to arrange their own flights home, but in some cases were offered special fares by airlines, or were offered spare seats on CAA-organised flights at a reasonable cost.