XL Airways was at the centre of the accounting scandal that two years ago sent airline caterer Alpha Airports into crisis, eventually causing it to be sold off, leaving its shareholders deeply
out of pocket.

Alpha Airports shares were suspended for weeks in 2006 after it admitted colluding with XL, then known as Excel Airways, to cover up accounting chicanery over a £7.5million catering supply contract.

Excel had asked Alpha to delay billing invoices on the contract at a time when Excel's then-parent company, Avion Group, was about to float on the Icelandic exchange.

The furore that erupted saw the departures of Alpha's chairman, chief executive and finance director and its subsequent sale to the Italian motorway services company Autogrill.

The scandal also cost the jobs of Excel's then-chief operating officer, Steven Tomlinson, and chief financial officer Paul Roberts.

Tomlinson had worked closely with XL chief executive Phil Wyatt, the founder of Excel, who subsequently masterminded the launch of XL in a 2006 management buyout.

Wyatt had originally launched Excel Airways in 2000 after a chequered career which had seen him run a charter airline Goldcrest, at the centre of storm over airline delays in the 1990s.

He had previously worked at Owners Abroad for the notorious Harry Goodman, whose Air Europe and Intasun group went bust in 1991 with debts of £800million, the last major UK tour operator to go bust.