Air Vanuatu’s administrators say the airline was “clearly not in a position to meet its financial commitments” well before it collapsed earlier this month, and is more than $99 million short of being able to pay back its customers, staff and lenders in full.

In a lengthy report to creditors, EY, the company’s liquidators, said Air Vanuatu had a “high-cost base for the size of … operations” and “a significant level of debt”, employing “a high number of staff for an operation of [its] size and nature”.