Darren

It is better that the CAA has protected customers outbound for 24 hours; the industry has been asking them to do this since before the XL collapse. It just makes sense and causes a lot less confusion.

Kiss was the victim of rumors and misinformation, in the trade they where placed on stop sale due to misinformation and rumor that they lost their ATOL and Insurance when in fact neither where true. While Flight Options where not the most secure company around the bookings they lost due to this added to their woes.

Why I have commented before that rumors cause more problems than they solve. Every year as a minimum (more if requested) a company has to prove that it has the finance in place to continue trading; a company in the red will not be allowed to continue.

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Darren
As I understand the same people are behind Kiss that were part of XL and set up Kiss flights knowing XL was going bust
You may want to investigate as if I remember correctly there was a lot of flack at the time that they could set up another business so quickly after one failed
It would be in Travel weekly about the time XL went under

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Sorry it was Freedom flights which collapsed in 2009

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the problem is that people who are involved in previous collapses find themselves being able to set up business again and simply do not learn from their mistakes.

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Freedom Flights where sold to the XL group. The people who set it up then set up Kiss, so yes there is a connection. In travel there are limits on people setting up a new company when you have been a owner or director of a failed company.

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Darren

There has been a lot of questions about the amount of failures of tour company’s (and I would expect a few agents as well) why so many and why now. The simple reason behind most of the failures is the Ash Cloud.

*Airlines are being bailed out by governments, Tour Operators are not.
*Airlines still made Tour Operators pay for the flights that did not happen (anyone think that airlines are on a winner?)
* Tour Operators still had to meet all there normal costs in a period with no income.
* Tour Operators had to meet extra costs of dealing with stranded passengers.
* Tour Operators have paid compensation to travelers’ caught up by the ash cloud. (in some cases this was as much as 10x the amount paid).

You take any business and force it to pay out money for no income and it will not last long. What surprises me is not the company’s going under; it is that has not been more!

To quote the boss of Kiss “The effect of the volcanic ash was devastating, when the banks were in trouble the government bailed them out but when the tour operators had to cope with the enforced closure of the skies and the expensive cost of repatriation the government did not help.”

We now all know that the closer was an over reaction, add to the government saying we are going to stop you trading but force you to pay out money… oh and by the way we will not help even if we are putting you in this position. Is anyone really surprised?

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Interested to read the experience of people here claiming refunds. My claim was apparently sent to CAA from Travel Republic on Sept 22nd but 2 months later, I have yet to receive an acknowledgement from CAA. Should I be concerned by that?

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