GUERNSEY businessman Colin Gevaise-Brazier’s Irish-based budget airline has collapsed after just a handful of flights. JetGreen went bust last week, leaving hundreds of passengers stranded in the south of Spain.

It had been in business for eight days, had run 16 flights for 3,000 paying customers and spent £1.36m., Irish reports said.

Mr Gervaise-Brazier, 60, known to most as ‘Gerve’, became a director of the airline after previous airline FreshAer failed to get off the ground.

He refused to comment when approached yesterday. Last week, all he would say to the Irish newspaper was: ‘It’s a sad situation. We have put an awful lot of time and effort into the project.’

Mr Gervaise-Brazier is a self-made millionaire and was well known as the Guernsey football team’s goalkeeper for many years during the 1960s and 1970s.

In the 1980s, he was a competitive powerboater and his craft, Visions of Guernsey, was a regular feature in the Formula One of the seas.

He has been involved in every major new industry of the past two decades, from video to the Internet and from telecoms to home DIY. He has been linked with software-development firms, phonecard technology and video rental and is a former director of DIY superstore chain B&Q.

The newspaper alleged that most of the money put into JetGreen came through Mr Gervaise-Brazier’s Dublin Atlantic Investment Company, although he refused to discuss the company’s backers.

The airline’s collapse has led to widespread criticism of flight regulators in Ireland over how a new airline could go bust so quickly.

Irish aviation regulator Bill Prasifka said: ‘It can and probably will happen again.’

Niall McDonnell, president of the Irish Tour Operators’ Association, said his organisation had warned the Minister for Transport that a similar collapse was waiting to happen.

‘One has to wonder what their business-planning processes are when they collapse within days of commencing operations.

‘It appears to be open season – anybody can start an airline and take bookings and in the final analysis, it is consumers who suffer.’

Mr Prasifka said: ‘JetGreen fulfilled the criteria and paid its licence fee.

In hindsight, it would have been better if it hadn’t got into the market but there’s nothing we could have done.

‘There is only so much the regulator can do.

‘We cannot make it impossible for newcomers to enter the industry or else the consumer might suffer in another way,’ said Mr Prasifka

The airline, which took bookings only on the Internet, was flying to Alicante and Malaga.

‘It needed to secure 20% of the customers currently on the route to make a profit, industry sources said.

None of the flights departed on time, with delays of between two and four hours, allegedly because the airline had failed to book slots.

JetGreen flew about 3,100 passengers to Spain, 1,400 of whom were faced with no way of getting home.

But the company had been forced to put in place a bond of about 410,000 euros to secure passengers a flight home in the event of its collapse.