Jetline failed with debts of more than £5.8 million, £3.4m of which was owed to suppliers, according to administrators.
Cruise lines were its biggest creditors, with Princess owed £427,000, Celebrity £248,000, Holland America Line £236,000, Royal Caribbean £175,000 and Cunard £132,000.
The joint administrators’ preliminary notes of Jetline’s estimated financial position, filed with Companies House, show that other major unsecured creditors included flight provider Aviate, which was owed £523,000, Bedsonline, owed £288,000, and Rocky Mountaineer, owed £107,000.
Jetline staff were owed £37,000 when the company called in administrators in March after the Civil Aviation Authority withdrew its ATOL. Previously, Carnival group cruise lines had cancelled some customers bookings, citing breach of contract.
Joint administrators Neil Bennett of Leonard Curtis and Alan Clark of Carter Clark said they are ‘of the opinion the company has insufficient property to enable a distribution to be made to unsecured creditors’.
Jetline had a £1.2 million loan from Barclays Bank, secured on its property in North London, which the administrators expect to be repaid from the sale of the premises.
Customers were owed £800,000 when the company collapsed. The Civil Aviation Authority said Jetline had 800 ATOL-protected bookings.
Jetline, which was a member of the Advantage Travel Partnership, traded under a number of names including Jetline Holidays and Jetline Cruise.
In the report, the joint adminstrators said Jetline, which launched in 2000, had expanded rapidly after entering the cruise market, achieving a turnover of £10 million by 2012. It was badly hit by the pandemic, during which time it left ABTA following the launch of an investigation over its refund policy, but business bounced back in 2022, when turnover reached £21m.
However, turnover sank to £16m in 2023, hitting Jetline’s cashflow and forcing it to cut back on marketing, which caused a further decline, said the administrators. Attempts by the Directors Steven Roberts and Andrew Todd proved ‘fruitless’, they added.
When it collapsed, the company had a database of 529,000 holidays customers and 247,000 cruise customers in the UK.
