Yesterday morning we picked up a copy of The Times and came across a story about Monarch Airlines. It said that the bookmaker Paddy Power had recently slashed the odds on Monarch being the next airline to go into administration from 50-1 to 4-1 favourite. This was after it had received more than 100 bets on Monarch during the previous week. “Next airline to go bust?” is one of Paddy Power’s ‘novelty’ bets.

We then checked the home page of the BBC news website and saw that it too was carrying the story. A quick search for Monarch airlines on Google right now reveals that the link to the Monarch website at the top of the organic search results has been displaced by the news story and its array of damaging headlines

“Monarch Airlines has hit back at bookmaker Paddy Power for running a book suggesting it could be the next carrier to collapse.”

“Monarch Airlines denies it is in financial trouble‎”

Now put yourself in the shoes of a potential Monarch customer. Are you feeling nervous yet? Is that alternative flight which you were looking at, albeit a few pounds more expensive, suddenly looking a lot more attractive? It’s not hard to imagine that a potentially significant proportion of people seeing these headlines are going to be more than a little concerned.

Let’s do the maths for a moment. The bookmaker states that it has taken a hundred bets and the odds have shortened from 50-1 to 4-1. The Telegraph reports that the potential payout is £7,000. Say the average odds were 7-1 (the average was probably higher). This means that a hundred punters have bet ten pounds each on the carrier’s demise. It’s not exactly a wall of money is it? Indeed, if you were being very cynical you might wonder, given the pick up in bookings that many travel companies experience at this time of year, how many of these bets were placed by Monarch’s competitors.

This form of betting should be outlawed. A very small number of people, betting tiny sums of money, coupled with a quick press release from a publicity seeking bookmaker now have a highly regarded carrier hugely on the back foot. Monarch has been around for over 40 years and employs nearly 3,000 people. Tim Jeans, Monarch managing director, has said “If people make their travel decisions on the back of what an Irish bookmaker thinks, I need to rethink my business plan. It’s not helpful but it’s tomorrow’s chip paper.”

Let’s hope he’s right and that this story fades as quickly as it has come into view. However, something does need to be done so that Mr Jeans, and the CEOs of other airlines, can be left to devote their energies to something a bit more worthwhile than dealing with the backlash from this irresponsible form of bookmaking.

FlyGlobespan entered administration on Wednesday 16^th December. This is obviously devastating news for the company’s employees, the passengers overseas at the time and the tens of thousands of people who have forward bookings.

We are in the process of refunding all customers who booked FlyGlobespan flights through us.

Aware of the risks for passengers booking flights directly with an airline, for which there is no legal requirement for protection, we pioneered our own Total Financial Protection scheme back in January 2009. This simple scheme promises customers their money back if an airline, hotel or other travel provider fails.

We have been working around the clock to help those impacted by the failure. Customers who booked through us are delighted they have not lost the money they paid for their flights.

We have already refunded many customers and will complete the process before the end of next month.