The CAA today announced that the final repatriation charter flights for tourists hit by the failure of XL Leisure Group have arrived back in the UK.

The flights carried the last of an estimated 83,000 customers who were returned home on 222 flights chartered to fly to 40 destinations in the 17 days since XL went bust.

The 83,000 included Atol-protected XL passengers, the customers of other Atol-protected tour operators that shared XL flights, and XL Airways passengers who booked who will have to pay a fee for their flight home.

As well as organising flights, the CAA and travel industry arranged transport by ferries, coaches, trains and taxis to bring people home, as well as additional accommodation.

It said that because there would be no more chartered repatriation flights operating, customers who had booked direct with XL Airways and were not Atol-protected would have to make their own arrangements to return to the UK.

The CAA said its focus was now on working to deal with refund claims from people with pre-booked Atol-protected XL holidays.

Richard Jackson, CAA director of consumer protection, said: “The task of repatriating XL customers at the end of their holidays is now by and large completed.

“We are pleased that overall these arrangements have worked well and once again I want to extend my thanks to our colleagues in the travel industry and the overseas representatives of Thomson/First Choice, Thomas Cook and Virgin Holidays, whose hard work ensured the smoothest possible operation.

“We recognise the need to learn from our experiences and we will be reviewing our response so far to the XL failure to ensure that any relevant lessons are learned to ensure that the CAA continues to offer customers affected by failures such as this one the best level of service.

“We now ask claimants to bear with us and understand we are working as swiftly as possible to process refund claims.”

Preliminary work to process the refunds from more than 200,000 customers who have pre-booked holidays with XL has already started. The CAA said it expected about 70,000 claims so the refund process would take longer than for smaller failures.

The CAA’s repatriation charter flights picked up customers from Alicante, Malaga and Palma (Spain); Athens, Chania, Corfu, Heraklion, Kalamata, Kavala, Kefalonia, Kos, Lesbos, Mykonos, Preveza, Rhodes, Samos, Santorini, Skiathos, Zante (Greece); Bodrum, Dalaman (Turkey); Cagliari (Sardinia); Faro (Portugal); Hurghada, Sharm el Sheikh (Egypt); Bridgetown (Barbados); Antigua, Grenada, St Kitts, St Lucia, Tobago (Caribbean); Larnaca, Paphos (Cyprus); Orlando, Sanford (Florida); Arrecife (Lanzarote); Fuerteventura, Las Palmas, Tenerife (Canaries); and Mahon (Minorca).

The flights arrived in the UK at Belfast, Birmingham, Bristol, East Midlands, Gatwick, Glasgow, Heathrow, Leeds/Bradford, Manchester and Newcastle.