Flying Into The Future: Would ATOL Reforms Have Helped More Monarch Customers?

Shortly after the last ever Monarch Airlines flight landed at Manchester Airport in the early hours of Monday morning, the airline entered administration, prompting the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) to launch its "biggest ever peacetime repatriation" to bring home the 110,000 Monarch customers stranded abroad.

The impact on those travellers should be minimal, but an estimated 750,000 customers' future flights and holidays have been cancelled.  Where they stand primarily comes down to whether their booking is protected by the UK's Air Travel Organisers' Licence (ATOL) scheme. 

The scheme is shortly due for its most substantial overhaul in almost thirty years, as the UK implements the 2015 EU Package Travel Directive¹ (Directive).  As that makes a number of changes which should reflect how we now book package travel arrangements, we consider how the proposed ATOL reforms would have protected those affected by the Monarch collapse.