holiday prices warning

fft100 wrote: maybe the price of beer might even come down !

fft100 gets todays prize for the most upbeat assessment of global economic armageddon... :lol:


To add to the comments above, I believe Visa Debit cards also provide protection (other debit cards don't) so you can book with those and shouldn't incur the extra "credit card charge" for certain big orange airlines... but check your particular card's conditions to be sure.

fft100 wrote:I think the XL group had about 40 planes. I havnt looked at the accounts, but would guess that they were leased. I dont see other companies taking up the leases in the current climate (even if their banks let them !), so that is a lot of seats taken off the market.

Remember that its only XL UK that went under, the French and German operations are unaffected. XL Airways, which is the only airline affected by the administration had a fleet of 15 aircraft, none of which were chartered for winter holidays for ski holidays. They had 3 Boeing 767s which did the Caribbean routes, and 12 Boeing 737s which buzzed around the European and Egypt routes.

If, like me, you are looking for a holiday in the next 2 weeks to replace one you had booked with part of the group (in my case Kosmar), its not going to happen, because the other operators have put up their prices 4 sometimes 5 times the normal on routes previously served by XL, notably Greece, Cyprus and Egypt.

As for winter holidays for us skiers and boarders, I dont see that XL will affect it, although obviously I acknowledge that the current financial doom and gloom could well affect other businesses.

I knew i should have checked first before saying 40. Apparently 21 :-( Though some of those could be on loan elsewhere.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XL_Airways

However, there could be some winter impact as they flew into Geneva, Grenoble, Chambery. That would affect some individual skiers, and i also read elsewhere that other winter tour operators (not part of xl group) used these XL flights as well.

And for us anoraks out there here is a full list of the 21 with history.
http://www.ch-aviation.ch/aircraft.php?search=set&airline=XLA&al_op=1

Thats probably enough about aircraft.

Weird. Wikipedia states 15 aircraft, and then names 17 in the fleet list. Interestingly, neither of these websites makes reference to the 2 Boeing 757s that XL operated (maybe on lease?) which I saw in July at Rhodes Airport.

I usually go home for xmas, but this year they are charging 1k for two people to fly to Portugal, same flights in February will cost me £130 (already booked). This was with the same company.

Prices this winter will be pretty bad.

From comments on snowheads, Ski Esprit and Ski Total were both using XL but have both now re-booked their clients onto Jet2 - so fewer seats free with them then. And with both easyJet and RyanAir having trimmed routes already... the ferries could do well this winter if the tunnel doesn't get fixed.

Tony_H wrote:Weird. Wikipedia states 15 aircraft, and then names 17 in the fleet list. Interestingly, neither of these websites makes reference to the 2 Boeing 757s that XL operated (maybe on lease?) which I saw in July at Rhodes Airport.

XL UK were 'borrowing' some of XL France's planes to bolster their own fleet during peak season, I know they were using at least one of these from Manchester on the trans atlantic route. This was mid-air when the company went into administration and was refused landing at Manchester and also why it was diverted to Paris before the customers were flown back to Manchester via another carrier.

freezywater wrote:

Tony_H wrote:Weird. Wikipedia states 15 aircraft, and then names 17 in the fleet list. Interestingly, neither of these websites makes reference to the 2 Boeing 757s that XL operated (maybe on lease?) which I saw in July at Rhodes Airport.

XL UK were 'borrowing' some of XL France's planes to bolster their own fleet during peak season, I know they were using at least one of these from Manchester on the trans atlantic route. This was mid-air when the company went into administration and was refused landing at Manchester and also why it was diverted to Paris before the customers were flown back to Manchester via another carrier.

I believe the French one they were "borrowing" was a larger Airbus. The 757's had a G- prefix.