The CAA has made arrangements to fly the 110,000 Monarch passengers currently on holiday back to the UK, following the collapse of Monarch Airlines and Monarch Holidays earlier today (October 2).

Even though only 15 to 20% of these passengers were travelling on Atol-protected holidays, the government has instructed the CAA to bring all Monarch customers back to the UK.

David Moesli, the CAA’s deputy director of the Consumer Protection Group, said: “It was a government decision. The government will pay – the Air Travel Trust Fund will only be covering the Atol passengers and will not be paying for the whole exercise.

“The government intends to recover monies from other parties. But that is not something we are involved in.”

The CAA has chartered aircraft from 16 different carriers to bring the 110,000 passengers home over the next two weeks.

Andy Cohen, head of Atol at the CAA, added: “We are under instruction from the government to launch a full repatriation programme for all the passengers due to come back between now and October 15.

“Anybody on an Atol holiday can continue as normal. We are working to secure all hotel accommodation for all customers so they can continue their holiday without disruption as much as possible.”

Moesli added that there was a “high expectation” that credit and debit card companies would reimburse affected Monarch passengers.