Travel woe after holiday firm failure

By Huw Williams BBC News, Glasgow

XL planes were left grounded at Glasgow airport

The collapse of holiday giant XL Leisure has left tens of thousands of air travellers stranded. Among them were dozens of passengers hoping to fly to Tenerife from Glasgow, who arrived at the airport to find their flight had been a casualty.

"Woo-hoo. We're going on holiday."

The shout echoed round the tiny travel agent's office inside the main terminal building at Glasgow international airport.

That elation is understandable when you realise that every one of the customers crammed into the place and all those queuing outside have been at the airport for hours.

They didn't think they were going anywhere.

They were all booked on flight XLA 850 to Tenerife, due to take off at seven in the morning.

But when they arrived for check-in they were greeted by a stark message scrolling across the departure screens. "Cancelled. Enquire at Servisair."

At the Servisair desk, staff were handing out a printed leaflet that told them XL Leisure Group and all its subsidiaries had gone into administration "as a result of volatile fuel prices" and the economic downturn.

Wedding anniversary

Not everyone realised the implications straight away.

Jean Bryan, from Barrhead in Glasgow, said: "When I came in here at three o'clock this morning we looked up to see where our flight was. It said cancelled but at first I thought it was just delayed."

Then she realised her plane wasn't going anywhere.

I'm totally raging about this Colin Templeton Passenger

She told me: "I'm gutted. But what can you do about it?"

And the cancellation was grim news for John and Moira Ramsay from Campbeltown on the Argyll peninsula.

They'd been due to go on holiday to celebrate their silver wedding anniversary.

"We've been really looking forward to this for a long time," Moira told me. "It was either this or a party, so we decided against the party and just to go for a big holiday," she added.

And the couple are determined that they will get a break.

"Plan B is to get a last-minute holiday. We're not going home. So we'll get a last-minute holiday somewhere else if we can't get any satisfaction with money back or anything," Moira said.

Big questions

Colin Templeton was also in the queue at the travel agency, trying to book replacement flights for himself, and four members of his family.

"I'm totally raging about this," he said. "There's total disappointment on the face of my fiancee, my mum and dad and my daughter especially. She's been looking forward to this all year."

Queues formed at Glasgow airport as people tried to book alternative flights

The immediate priority for Colin was to get away.

After looking at possibilities from Newcastle, or even Belfast, the travel agents eventually found them replacement flights from Glasgow.

But that won't be the end of the matter. Colin insisted that there were big questions that would have to be answered.

"How has this happened? How long has it been going on? They must have known this was coming for months and months and months. These things don't happen overnight."

And, he said, he wanted to know how secure the future was for other budget airlines: "Who's going to be next?"

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