Symi Visitor Accommodation

Although in my last post I said I didn’t think anyone who had booked Viking flights through anyone other than Goldtrail would have any problems, it looks like Viking have been pruning their flight schedule for the remainder of 2010. How far this is due to the economy and how far to Goldtrail I don’t know and they aren’t saying.The major effect on Symi travellers is the flight from East Midlands to Rhodes, which is no longer bookable. Other airlines still do this route, and Allan has added a comment to the blog to say that Jet2 will start flying East Midlands to Rhodes in 2011. Thanks, Allan.

Travellers from Newcastle will find the flights after 14 August aren’t bookable, except for the half-term departure on 20 October, and the return a week later.

Edinburgh now has flights on 29 September and 6 October, with return flights on 6 and 13 October

Glasgow is bookable only outwards on the 29 September, returning on 13 October

The first groups of Goldtrail holiday customers have now been repatriated from Greece by the UK Civil Aviation Authority. It appears that most Goldtrail customers going to Greece flew with Viking, but Goldtrail wasn’t the charterer of the aircraft – that was Kiss Flights who resold blocks of seats to various tour operators, including Goldtrail and also sold direct to the public.

As a result these flights all seem to be still operating normally today (and Wednesday is the major day for flights to Rhodes ex-UK) so nobody travelling to Symi has anything to worry about, unless they bought a flight-only deal from Goldtrail rather than Kiss. In that case they need to contact the CAA – link given in my last posting.

The Goldtrail share of the market was much greater in travel to Turkey, and they do seem to have been the actual charterer for a number of flights, which have therefore stopped operating. In the main the operating charter airlines were Turkish based, and some of them may be financially damaged by this loss of income. Indeed a Turkish based plane was prevented from taking off for some time earlier today at Leeds-Bradford airport until outstanding airport fees were paid. Most UK regional airports will have lost about 5 plane-loads of passengers a week each as a result of the collapse, and that’s landing fees. car park charges, shop and catering sales which they won’t see, and will try and make up for some other way…..

UK readers will probably know that holiday company Goldtrail went into administration yesterday evening. It specialised in package holidays to Greece and Turkey, but also sold spare seats on its charter flights to independent travellers.

It didn’t sell holidays to Symi, so the scenes we saw when the XL group failed 2 years ago won’t be repeated today. There might be a few travellers who had booked seat-only with them who are on Symi (in which case the UK Civil Aviation Authority will make arrangements to get them home again), or have yet to travel, in which case they should be eligible for a refund of the fare paid, but will need to make their own arrangements for alternative flight bookings to continue their holiday.

I don’t know of any flights to Rhodes for which they were the lead charterer (though they certainly were to other parts of Greece and to Turkey), so all UK-Rhodes charters should continue to operate. If anyone knows of a flight which is cancelled due to the Goldtrail collapse, please let me know so others can rearrange their plans.