The woman behind a Harrogate travel company which has gone into liquidation, making 39 people redundant and leaving 2,000 pre-booked customers to be sorted out, is blaming government bureaucracy.

Celia Janes, managing director of Raho Travel, trading as Oz Talk and Kiwi Talk from Chatsworth Road, Harrogate, has sent customers and suppliers a message which alleges the Civil Aviation Authority pulled the plug on a healthy business by refusing to renew her licence to deal in air tickets on March 30.

Mrs Janes says the CAA acted on the basis of a weak financial position she reported last July 1, after difficulties caused by the tsunami on Boxing Day 2004. She says her accounts showed the business had recovered but the CAA refused to look at them.

It wanted her to come up with half-a-million pounds worth of under-writing but refused to give her time to fix it and she had to go into voluntary liquidation, leaving the CAA to sort out her customers, from insurance she paid £50,000 a year for.

Her statement says: “We can only assume this lumbering government body needs to keep its highly paid staff busy. The distress to the travelling public that they have caused is un-necessary. They were set up to avoid such things, not to cause them.” Mrs Janes’s protest was posted on an industry website, Travel Mole.

A CAA spokesman said it had no comment to make. Mrs Janes, who lives in Hookstone Chase, Harrogate, said that she stood to lose heavily and was considering legal action. She said yesterday: “I am not some fly-by-night. This was a well-run and profitable company. All our suppliers were willing to speak for us. But the CAA just put a hatchet through the middle of it.”

Raho Travel specialised in Australia and New Zealand and around 700 of its disappointed customers were cricket fans wanting to see some of England’s tour next winter. One woman paid more than £4,000 up-front for a four-week tour of Australia, which was due to start May 5. She chose Oz Talk because it had Australian staff “who seemed to know what they were talking about.”

Mrs Janes said customers with imminent travel arrangements should be contacted by another agent and invited to rebook. But she wants to help if she can and is contactable by email at celia@oztalk.co.uk. For refunds, contact the CAA at 0207 453 6350 or log onto atol.org.uk.

The CAA today issued the following advice:

- Customers abroad will be able to fly home as planned.

- Those passengers who booked scheduled flights only, and have received their air tickets, will be able to travel as planned. They should contact their airline if they require further information.

- Passengers holding scheduled airline tickets travelling on package holidays should not travel but instead apply for a refund from the CAA or their credit card issuer. The CAA can be contacted on 020 7453 6350.

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