Reports in various national newspapers would seem to indicate that the collapse of Monarch Airlines in 2017 will have cost the taxpayer £40m.

Greybull – which has also presided over failures at Comet, British Steel and M Local – bought Monarch in 2014.  Papers released by auditor KPMG show the controversial turnaround group lost £25m from the administration process, which was completed last month.

As a result Greybull will not contribute anything at all to the repatriation bill, which cost around £550 per passenger, a very high figure, but as an industry person pointed out, mostly a two-way flight with one leg empty.

The Luton Airport based carrier, founded in 1967, had been struggling for years to keep up with the rapid rise of budget airlines that changed the way holiday flights were sold.

Fortunes worsened when a string of terrorist attacks, including in Tunisia in 2015, hit bookings and a fall in the value of the pound raised costs following the Brexit vote.

In 2019 Thomas Cook and its airline also went into administration leaving 150,000 Britons stranded abroad.  How much was recovered from these passengers is not known.

www.insolvency-kpmg.co.uk/case+kpmg+TH928C2841.html