Effects of the airline shut-down

23rd April 2010

The volcanic ash cloud that shut down Europe’s airports spelt bad news for some companies but gave others an unexpected windfall.

On the losing side were the travel agencies, which had to bear the brunt of covering the costs of tourists stranded in distant lands.

Remigiusz Talarek, vice-president of Rainbow Tours, said that the first few days of the shut down had cost the company PLN 100,000, and that he expected the losses to rise. But that figure paled into comparison with those of the high-end agency Tui, which was losing an estimated GBP 6-7 million a day on its global operations.

With good news hard to come by, other travel agencies concentrated on getting people home, and on ...