18 Dec, 2009, Scotland, UK

The Finance Secretary, John Swinney said that the collapsed Scottish airline Flyglobespan is badly let down by the company that was handling its credit bookings. The Edinburgh-based airline went in the administration on Wednesday, leaving around 550 staff without any job and thousands of passengers were stranded abroad.

Mr. Swinney has said that the Flyglobespan was owed £34m by E-Clear, the company that processed its credit card payments. He also said £20m of this was for passengers who had flown already. The finance secretary said that the company would have a better chance to survive if the money had been passed on. The finance secretary also said that this company had been badly let down due to the fact that a private company, handling bookings on their behalf, did not pay them money that they were due of.

The Administrators PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) said that there was no choice other than ceasing flights and making redundancies. Thus out of the 650 workers at the Edinburgh-based firm, 550 are without a job now. Bruce Cartwright from administrators said that everything was done to ensure that 4,500 stranded holidaymakers will be brought home. He claimed that the remaining 27 of 60 crew left stranded abroad will return home on Friday.