The sudden closure of one of Britain’s oldest airlines has been blamed on terror attacks against tourists and political instability in key holiday destinations, which the carrier boss said had severely damaged the market for flights.
Writing to staff on Monday as the airline grounded all planes and cancelled tens of thousands of bookings, Monarch boss Andrew Swaffield explained: “The root cause is the closure, due to terrorism, of Sharm-El- Sheikh and Tunisia and the decimation of Turkey.”
Sharm-El-Sheikh was the site of a terror attack in 2015, when a Russian airliner returning holidaymakers from the Egyptian resort was downed by a terror bomb smuggled onto the aircraft, killing 224. The Islamic State claimed responsibility.
Tunisia was also targeted in 2015, when a gunman in Sousse (pictured above) killed 38 Western beachgoers — including 30 British citizens — and wounded 39.
Theresa May lays flowers at a beach in Tunisia where dozens of British tourists were killed in a terror attack in 2015 / AP IMAGES
Swaffield said that Turkey, another important foreign market for Monarch, suffered a downturn after the 2016 coup attempt which was followed by a wave of government repression. Istanbul airport was also subject to a mass-casualty suicide bombing in 2016, and a nightclub mass shooting in the same city followed just months later.
Monarch previously operated large numbers of flights to Sharm-El-Sheikh in Egypt, Tunisia, and Turkey, but despite attempting to move downmarket to keep afloat after the events it was unable to return to profitability.
The British government is now working to bring home 110,000 Brits who had flown abroad with Monarch before it ceased trading, and are now unable to use their return tickets.
Monarch planes stand silent on the tarmac at Luton, the airline’s home airport, after the company stopped trading / AFP Image
The airline is not the only area of the European tourist trade that terrorism has made an impact upon. Breitbart London has reported through 2017 on how tourist numbers to Paris have collapsed following years of Islamist terror attacks in the city.
In February, a new report found the numbers of visitors to the city had dropped by 1.5 million on 2016, and that the region had missed out on €1.3 billion in tourism revenue.