PEOPLE who have booked holidays with XL Leisure Group, the collapsed travel company, may lose almost £20m because they are ineligible for a refund.

Experts believe that about 30,000 customers who booked flights directly with Britain’s third largest tour operator are not covered for compensation.

This weekend MPs and senior travel industry figures stepped up pressure on the government to extend a £1 levy paid on package holidays for insurance purposes to all outbound flights. The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), the industry regulator, which has previously supported such a move, is also expected to press for the change.

“In the light of what has happened, the government must think again,” said Louise Ellman, the Labour chairman of the Commons transport select committee. “There is great confusion in that many tourists do not understand whether they are covered or not.”

Mark Tanzer, chief executive of Abta, which represents tour operators, said: “The failure of XL demonstrates the virtue of financial protection and the hazards of travelling without it. We shall renew our call to government to address this issue as a matter of the utmost urgency.”

XL Leisure went into administration in the early hours of Friday after running up debts of £143m. Its collapse – and the immediate grounding of its 21 aircraft – left 85,000 British tourists stranded abroad, while a further 200,000 advance holiday bookings were scrapped.

Yesterday passengers started returning home on specially chartered “rescue” flights organised by the CAA. However, some still faced a long road journey after being flown into airports hundreds of miles from their point of departure.

About 75,000 tourists abroad made their bookings through registered agents, including XL subsidiary companies, which are covered by the Atol scheme, an insurance programme run by the CAA. The cost of their return flights and any additional accommodation is covered by the CAA.

However, about 10,000 customers who booked their flights directly through XL’s website and call centres will have to foot the bill themselves. Those who made bookings using a credit card will still be able to claim a refund, but debit card users will probably have lost their money.

It is estimated that at least 10% of the 200,000 advance bookings with XL to destinations such as Florida, the Caribbean, Europe and north Africa were not covered by the Atol scheme.

David Hopkin, 29, who worked in the customer services department at Travel City Direct, a Swansea-based XL subsidiary company, fears that he has not only lost his job but has had his wedding plans wrecked as well.

Hopkin and his fiancée, Clare Addis, had planned to get married on the Caribbean island of St Lucia next month and had booked all their family’s flights directly through XL Airways using a debit card. “It is just terrible,” said Addis. “I broke down in floods of tears.”

Many victims made bookings or paid for extras just hours before XL went into administration.

Terry Baldwin, 42, from south London, paid for a £3,000 family holiday to Orlando, Florida, through Travel City Direct last November. He realised that the company had gone bust only when he arrived at Gatwick airport on Friday morning.

“We’ve booked it all on debit card so I don’t think I’m getting any of it back – it’s devastating,” said Baldwin.

“I even spoke to Travel City the night before because I wanted to check we’d paid for meals on the flight.”

XL’s failure is the biggest to hit the travel industry in almost 20 years and follows the collapse last month of Zoom, a budget transatlantic airline.

Phil Wyatt, XL’s chief executive, blamed rising oil prices – which had increased the company’s fuel bill by £40m year-on-year – and the economic downturn.

The Sunday Times revealed two weeks ago that XL was in financial trouble.

Wyatt, who has made his fortune from a string of travel companies and lives in a £2m mansion in West Sussex, said: “Ultimately, I blame myself – I’m the CEO. I take legal responsibility for it.”

On Friday Willie Walsh, the head of British Airways (BA), predicted that 30 small airlines would disappear by the end of the year. Last night the Italian flag carrier Alitalia warned that some of its flights might not be able to take off from Monday because of the high fuel prices.

By yesterday evening 11,900 stranded XL customers had been repatriated to the UK on 52 flights, according to the CAA. The entire airlift is expected to cost more than £42m – the size of the bond that XL had put up with the aviation regulator – and will require additional taxpayer funding through the government.

XL’s administrators refused to allow its 21 planes to be used in the airlift because of insurance problems, which led to the CAA chartering aircraft from rival companies including BA, bmi, Virgin Atlantic, Monarch and Astraeus.

One rescue flight from Egypt was operated by Bruce Dickinson, the lead singer of the rock group Iron Maiden, who is also a pilot for Astraeus.

Once back in Britain, some passengers faced a long journey home on buses and taxis laid on by the CAA.

Carl Tranter, 29, of Telford, Shropshire, was yesterday boarding a chartered BA flight in Orlando with his wife Melanie, 26, and their 22-month-old daughter, Kayleigh, after a £2,700 Disney-themed holiday.

“We should have flown on Friday night to Manchester and only found out our flight was cancelled when we arrived at the airport,” said Tranter. “Two XL reps told us we would be going to Manchester this morning, but we’ve just discovered we will be landing in Heathrow.”

The Department for Transport said there were no plans to introduce an insurance levy on flights.

It said: “Charging passengers an additional fee on every ticket will put up the prices for everyone in order to protect the small minority affected by an airline failure, some of whom will already have protection from credit card payment.”

Additional reporting: Paul Henderson in Orlando

- FIRE-HIT TUNNEL IS REOPENED

The Channel tunnel reopened to some passenger trains yesterday after a 16-hour fire on Thursday caused chaos for thousands of travellers.

Limited Eurostar services began running between London and Paris, Disneyland Paris and Brussels yesterday morning through the south tunnel, which escaped damage.

Eurostar was running only 12 trains each way on the Paris route, half the usual Saturday number. Some freight services have resumed but Eurotunnel, the tunnel’s operator, has not decided when shuttle trains carrying cars will start again.

The fire-damaged north tunnel may reopen partially this week.

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