Friday 12 September 2008

XL's administrators should explain their actions

The collapse of the XL group may be another unfortunate by-product of soaring fuel prices and the credit crunch.

But the consequences for 90,000 stranded passengers seem to have been avoidable. The adminstrators Kroll decided to ground 20 planes, instead of working with the CAA and ATOL to bring stranded passengers back. Those 20 planes could easily have been grounded after a repatriation exercise.

Yet no spokesman for this outfit saw fit to appear on the lunchtime news. Surely a financial deal could have been reached with the insurers and CAA to make everyone's life easier? Isn't it time that the administrators in such operations were required to pay some regard to customer interests?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Conor,



I agree with your comments after listening to the BBC news this afternoon whilst sitting here in Mallorca wondering what to do the administrator said they had been working on this for some weeks, therefore there seems a have been prior knowledge of this collapse and no pre planning to get people home. Consumers are always lowest on the list; we are creditors as well but small beer really. People first I say not banks or other organisations with risk management departments who have had chance to mitigate their losses.



We took a decision to buy alternative flights home via another carrier, but that was only because a friend text us earlier today and alerted us. We paid 500 Euros for 4 of us to get back to the UK. I have just checked the carrier now the cost is now in excess of 800 Euros someone is profiteering from the demise of XL already.



The CAA and ATol should also be looked at to. There is a web page which gives some information but seems to be deliberately confusing and its not been updated since early this morning also the published phone lines are just recorded messages. saying lines will be open up until 8pm.