LONDON - Around 4,500 passengers were stranded abroad on Thursday after the suspension of Scottish airline Flyglobespan, administrator PricewaterhouseCoopers said.

The owner of the airline, Globespan, was put into administration late on Wednesday after suffering a cash crisis.

All flights by the Edinburgh-based airline have been cancelled and will not be rescheduled.

Most of the stranded passengers are in Spain, Portugal, Cyprus and Egypt.

Some 1,000 who booked holiday packages with the airline will be covered by ATOL industry-backed insurance.

But the other 3,500 who booked flights directly face covering the extra cost of their return flight with alternative carriers.

Those who paid by credit card are being advised to contact their card issuer to see if they are also protected.

Around 800 staff jobs at the airline are at risk.

We are talking to all staff this morning, administrator Bruce Cartwright of PricewaterhouseCoopers told BBC television.

Unfortunately it is absolutely clear that the operation has ceased to fly ... The operation is in wind-down, which inevitably means redundancies.
Cartwright said he would be trying to track down what funds were available at the airline.

Globespan itself is owed considerable money from online bookings that hasn't reached the company, he said.

I believe there are substantial sums owed to Globespan that really should be in our hands but currently are not.

(Reporting by Tim Castle; Editing by Steve Addison)