Monarch Airlines (1968) (London Luton) has won an appeal to retain control of slots at London Gatwick and London Luton following a hearing on Wednesday, November 22.
Blair Nimmo, a bankruptcy administrator at KPMG, said in a statement the Court of Appeal ruling's significance to the sector “could not be underestimated”.
“We will now progress the slot exchange transactions we have underway, whose buyers will be announced at completion. We must stress there will be no immediate distributions to any creditors,” he said.
Monarch had appealed a UK High Court decision earlier this month that had ruled the bankrupt carrier could not lay claim to its airport slots "by reason of historical precedence ('grandfather rights')".
While slots at each of Manchester International, Birmingham, GB, and Leeds/Bradford were returned to the UK's Airport Coordination Ltd. (ACL), those for Gatwick and Luton, the most lucrative, were contested in this appeal.
