Airline and Operator Monarch Gets Life-Saving Investment From Major Stakeholder

UK airline and tour operator Monarch has been brought back from the brink thanks to a $202 million (£165 million) investment from its majority shareholder.

The company claims the injection from Greybull Capital is the biggest in its 48-year history.

The funding has satisfied regulators at the UK’s Civil Aviation Authority who have granted it new year-long operating licenses.

Monarch is unusual in the UK in that many of its flight-only tickets require an air travel organizer’s license (ATOL). Usually an ATOL is only required for a company selling flights and another element e.g. accommodation.

Concerns about the health of the airline were raised at the end of September when a number of aircraft from the likes of United were flown into several European airports with the departure times mirroring those of Monarch.

It was suggested that that they were in place to bring back thousands of holidaymakers in the event that Monarch went out of business. Neither Monarch nor the CAA have confirmed this theory.

Monarch almost collapsed two years ago and needed to be rescued by Greybull after previous shareholders the Swiss-based Mantegazza family decided to check out.

In its 2014 financial year it made an operating loss of $150 million (£94 million) but last year it swung to a $69 million (£45 million) operating profit.

Despite the improvement the accounts noted that it still needed to secure facilities of $53.9 million (£35 million).

In an interview on BBC Radio 4, CEO Andrew Swaffield said the company’s problems stemmed from terrorism in Egypt and Turkey as well as the collapse in the value of the pound after the Brexit vote.