£300m loss cripples troubled UK airline

THE threat of terrorism and a drop in the number of Britons taking holidays abroad led budget airline Monarch to post a crippling loss of nearly £300m last year.

Monarch Airlines, part of Greybull Capital-owned Monarch Group, lost £291.1m in the year to the end of last October, down from a profit of £26.9m in 2015. Despite strong demands for its flights to Madrid and Lisbon, Monarch said it was hit by ‘ a number of trading headwinds’. Chiefly, it saw demand for flights to Turkey fall off a cliff following terrorist incidents there.

It also suffered from the closure of key winter destination Sharm El Sheikh airport in Egypt as a result of travel guidance from the UK Government.

Monarch saw total booked passengers fall 6.8pc while its load factor – a measure of how many seats are on average filled on a plane – fell 5.3pc to 78.6pc. Revenue per seat fell 13.2pc.