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Been done?
Just saw it on the news.
If they do go pop it will be the largest emergency repatriation effort since WW11 apparently.
Shit, we are due to go out to Tenerife with them in October school hols. The kids won’t be happy if we don’t get to go.
They need An extra £200m to stay afloat or its going to cost the civil aviation authority £600m to get everyone home.
Funny old world 🙄
Waiting for the photoshopped "Let's leave the EU and save Thomas Cook instead."
Silly jokes aside, hope this doesn't wreck anyone's holiday plans
Interesting, I wonder how their business model has altered since... y’kno 😵
aberdeenlune
Member
Shit, we are due to go out to Tenerife with them in October school hols. The kids won’t be happy if we don’t get to go.
Genuinely feel for you mate and hopefully they sort this out. It's like the 1970s again where this sort of stuff happened a lot apparently?
Mr lad went away with them only a few weeks back with his girlfriend. I was a bit worried about that but luckily the company has survived this far.
Fingers crossed for you guys too.👍
Oh dear. Who would have thought a survey of public opinion would have resulted in holiday flights to and from Majorca being cancelled, eh? Oh well; “price worth paying”, “sovereignty”, “voice of the people”?
Blue passports don’t mean a thing when they haven’t been internationally ratified. Lofl.
I booked flights to Egypt with them last week to go in November. 🤞🤞🤞
Other travel companies/airlines are also in difficulty.
https://onemileatatime.com/xl-airways-financial-problems/
See also Cathay Pacific cutting loads of flights.
Tough time for the industry.
Travelling with TC and just waiting to board a flight to Naples for a week away. Possibility it could be more than a week...
Halfway through our hol with TK in almeria.
Our first family holiday since mini mon arrived could be more memorable than we thought.
Everything’s going to be just fine.........
Fingers crossed for you guys going abroad or already abroad.
Hopefully, even if things go south it won't be for weeks rather than days.
Now the cat is out of the bag, it seems collapse is even more likely, new bookings are going to plummet from today. ☹️ Employ loads of people too, (including one of my cousins) Shit news around.
I guess the £4.5k they kept after I had to cancel my holiday hasn’t kept them going....
Cancelled due to 3 yo Daughter having serious brain injury (ADEM), they were buggers when I rang to cancel
My brother started a permanent job with them on Monday, after years subcontracting all around Europe he was well pleased to be able to settle in the Manchester area.
On the other hand he did vote for Brexit, figure that one out.
Pretty inevitable that one of the big holiday firms would go pop in the current climate. Wouldn't be surprised to see another one hit the buffers as well. Sad news.
The airline is separate - yeah?
Don’t think it is sadly.
I think the shareholders should have to pay the balance of the repatriation costs rather than the taxpayer. As shareholders are the owners of the company it is their responsibility to employ the right people to run the company hence the need for votes at the agm for executive and non executive roles on the board
I think the shareholders should have to pay the balance of the repatriation costs rather than the taxpayer.
The costs are already paid by previous travellers in an insurance fund :-
ATOL is able to provide this assistance by requiring ATOL holders to pay a fee for each traveller, which is held in a fund managed by the Air Travel Trust. This fund is used to refund, repatriate or reimburse travellers for the cost of repaying for the affected parts of their trip.
I guess the £4.5k they kept after I had to cancel my holiday hasn’t kept them going….
Cancelled due to 3 yo Daughter having serious brain injury (ADEM), they were buggers when I rang to cancel
So they stuck to their Ts & Cs and you claimed off insurance. Standard travel company stance tbh, wouldn’t hold it against them (has similar elsewhere when a family member died)
So they stuck to their Ts & Cs and you claimed off insurance.
You'd be amazed at how many people don't take out insurance 🙁
I've just booked a trip for nxt Febuary and haven't taken out a cancellation policy. But it was only £540 so can afford to self insure. I couldn't if it was a £4500 trip.
Hope your daughter is well JJ262 and you all get a holiday 👍
"You’d be amazed at how many people don’t take out insurance 🙁"
I'll put my head above the parapet and say it was embarrassingly recently it clicked for me that half the value in travel insurance was the cancellation part and it's best to buy at time of booking the holiday. I used to buy insurance in the days immediately before flying - I assumed I was buying 10 or so days insurance from date of purchase previously.
Hope your daughter's on the mend!
Will keep on happening, although things like brexit are having an effect, why would you bother with a package company when you can do it all online independently. I'm surprised so many have lasted this long.
The airline is separate – yeah?
Not at the moment as said, but apparently it is a profitable bit so they are trying to separate it.
Even if they do the tour operator is the airline's biggest customer so whether the airline could survive without them is debatable, it would certainly have a massive impact with lots of redundancies
I think the shareholders should have to pay the balance of the repatriation costs rather than the taxpayer. As shareholders are the owners of the company it is their responsibility to employ the right people to run the company hence the need for votes at the agm for executive and non executive roles on the board
If you bought £1000 of Thomas Cook shares in Spring 2018 you would be sitting on £40 at the moment, which would fall to zero if they go bust. Shareholders take an absolute beating when companies go this way. I'm not sure how transferring extra liabilities on to shareholders would beneift anyone.
It's also a public LIMITED company. The Limited part denotes the liability of the shareholders and is what differentiates it from a sole trader or partnership.
That Standard Grade 3 for Economics finally paying its way!
A drop less kerosene burnt, I have mixed feeling. I feel sorry for the unfortunates stuck somewhere or losing the cost of the tickets, but every plane not flying is good news.
Brexit staycations then.
It is what they want after all, keep JonnyF out and UK Citizens in.
🤣💨💨💨💨
Sad to see a big company possibly going under hope it doesn't happen for the staff and customers sake.
Can you imagine the size of the interview panel if shareholders were responsible for employing the staff.
Now the cat is out of the bag, it seems collapse is even more likely, new bookings are going to plummet from today.
It has been on the cards for some time and I am surprised people have continued to book with them. We avoided using them when booking a holiday at the beginning of August (travelling in the third week of August) for that very reason. But I agree - I can't see them surviving this without a huge cash injection/buy out from their Chinese investors (their major shareholder I believe).
Now the cat is out of the bag, it seems collapse is even more likely, new bookings are going to plummet from today
They've been on the brink for some time, been in the Finance pages for weeks if not months...
Not at the moment as said, but apparently it is a profitable bit so they are trying to separate it.
The liquidator will sell of whatever bits it can, so that will probably survive.
but every plane not flying is good news.
People will just fly with someone else, there won't be an overall reduction in flights. But you know that don't you 😉
If they do go pop it will be the largest emergency repatriation effort since WW11 apparently
Did I miss world wars 3 to 10?
Seems like another market disrupted, pay more for a service with a rep onsite or pay less and dont receive that service, with the race to the bottom I guess most aren't.
Now the cat is out of the bag, it seems collapse is even more likely, new bookings are going to plummet from today.
It has been on the cards for some time and I am surprised people have continued to book with them.
They’ve been on the brink for some time, been in the Finance pages for weeks if not months…
Oh yeah! I'd forgotten that, and I suspect that other recent customers have too. Maybe one significant plummet has already occurred and that's adding to the problems now. My bosses wife is a finance director for them, (couldn't remember if it was Thomas Cook or TUI) apparently she's been pulling some long hours recently. 🙁
"I’ll put my head above the parapet and say it was embarrassingly recently it clicked for me that half the value in travel insurance was the cancellation part and it’s best to buy at time of booking the holiday. I used to buy insurance in the days immediately before flying – I assumed I was buying 10 or so days insurance from date of purchase previously.
Hope your daughter’s on the mend!"
Cheers Scruff! 🙂
She's getting there, hell of a scary time! I'm in the middle of sorting the travel insurance claim. It seemed crazy how after explain the situation (a week before due to fly), they were just "ok, the fee for cancelling is the full cost, thanks. bye!"
apparently she’s been pulling some long hours recently
Those documents won't shred themselves.
They have asked the government for a bailout.
This could be interesting.
Normally a Tory government would say **** off... But Boris seems a bit flush with cash in the run up to the election so we'll see..
Yeah, saying *could* it go insolvent within hours.
Bloody hell, not good.
Has anyone gone through the process of getting money back when a holiday company goes under? I'm due to be going to majorca on 13 October
Looking at alternatives I'm assuming if it all goes down the toilet there's going to be a big price hike as everyone does the same thing
If you paid by credit card you’ll be fine. Not sure about price hikes though as there will be a load of capacity in the hole left by the Thomas Cook bookings, except where they own the hotels.
I wonder how soon thomas cook pays the portion of the holiday to the individual hotels when its booked? There could be some bargain rooms around if the hotels have already received payment as they will be wanting to fill them again.
People will just fly with someone else, there won’t be an overall reduction in flights. But you know that don’t you
Are you sure about that? There won't be enough free capacity to pick up everyone so other companies will put up prices because they can in this case. That will put people off. In fact they can raise prices up until the point demand is dropping off again. Edukator is probably right here
Normally a Tory government would say **** off… But Boris seems a bit flush with cash in the run up to the election so we’ll see..
The contards wont do anything to help. Why should they? They didn’t help any other industry over the last 10years when in trouble, in fact they’ve gone out of their way to say “it illegal to assist business”
So I predict they will stick to their current policy of telling everyone to piss off.
I wonder how soon thomas cook pays the portion of the holiday to the individual hotels when its booked?
I’d be surprised if they paid in advance.
why would you bother with a package company when you can do it all online independently
I've done ski holidays independently for years, but had a scare recently when the return transfer was delayed and we nearly missed the flight home. If you're independent, that's your problem to fix; on a package it's all down to the operator.
When Monarch went, the CAA hired planes and pilots to bring people home, at huge cost, and it sounds as if the same could happen. Why don't the CAA use the bankrupt airlines planes and staff? They could extend the licence for a week for repatriation only, and using the facilities that are already set up must be cheaper.
I’d be surprised if they paid in advance.
Yes, I imagine hotels will stop feeding people pretty much immediately.
Monarch went under the day before we were due to go on holiday to Venice. Ended up booking the flights with Ryanair and speaking to the hotel directly (who hadn’t been paid) to keep our room. Ended up costing about the same.
Refunded via ATOL. Took a few weeks as there were obviously a lot of claims.
Scary times for staff and people on holiday or waiting to go 🙁
The mechs were all in at Manchester last night collecting their tools....
Sat up in Manchester on standby, flying third party work for another company, although we’ve had contracts for TCX in the past. I’m sure we’ll be flying repatriation flights as and when required. Sad times.
It’s an awful time for many folk, not just direct employees, but all the associated companies and their employees too. And not forgetting the stress on the customers. The flights we did for TCX were generally full, so the capacity is utilised. There will be a big bun-fight over slots, however my colleagues and I aren’t aware who has spare aircraft to service that requirement. The widebodied jets won’t be taken on (IMHO) by anyone as they’re seriously old now and would be a commercial liability. I don’t know about the narrowbodies.
Why don’t the CAA use the bankrupt airlines planes and staff?
The aircraft are owned by a leasing company; they will also be impounded at airfields until the landing/parking fees are settled and that they have the regulatory approval to fly, which can’t be issued to a bankrupt airline. The crew and ground staff will be busy looking for new jobs. Their passes will expire as Security is paramount.
The CAA are merely a regulator. They can’t and won’t requisition aircraft that are owned by a bank or anyone else.
I can’t help feel that RBS who were bailed out by the taxpayer should be coughing up; it’ll cost 3 times the bailout to repatriate...
Gov to bail out or not?
TC have c600,000 holidaymakers abroad; c150k from UK; estimated repatriation cost is £600mill.
Additional funding requirement to satisfy prospective lenders is £200mill.
If a bail-out happens would Gov be able to recover costs from future profits (if TC continue trading)?
If repatriation cost is for UK holidaymakers only that's £4k/head; assume an average of 250 seats on a plane - that's £1mill/plane which presumably includes all costs.
Sounds like a lot but I have no understanding of aviation industry costings.
Problem with the government bailing them out for £200 million is that will tide them over through the winter, when they'll need another £200 million, and another next autumn.....
If it's not a viable business any longer chucking chunks of cash at it really isn't going to help anything other than short term cash flow. If they had a great restructuring idea presumably they'd be well into that by now after the last investor cash injection about 6 months ago IIRC??
You’d be amazed at how many people don’t take out insurance
Isn't that what Just Giving is for nowadays? Go on holiday, get pissed, fall off balcony then raise money to get medivac home.
Guess who is due to fly home from Mallorca tomorrow on TC? 🙋♀️😂
why would taxpayer need to repatriate people? genuine question - isnt this what insurance/ATOL/ABTA is for. Ok there are always edge cases and short term welfare things but surely this is for people to make their own arrangements, and if they havent then tough?
Guess who is due to fly home from Mallorca tomorrow on TC?
Is it Ronnie Pickering?
Boris has some thinking to do, if he temporary saves Thomas Cook, he sets a precident for shaking the magic money tree for lots of other UK businesses that will go pop if Brexit goes ahead... Especially if his beloved No Deal flavour happens, god help us ordinary folk!
Those that compare bailing out Banks to bailing out TC are somewhat way off the mark.
Afterall, you do want your Bank Deposits back don’t you? Had the Govt not bailed them (didn’t really bail them but bought large chunks of shareholding’s in them then tagged lending on assets) you wouldn’t have been able to get at your money. The BoE is lender of last resort, it’s ITS job to make sure people have access to their funds. If you want anyone to blame for that fiasco... have a pop at the directors and CEO’s who flagrantly pissed your money and assets against bad stock and shifty investment management.
As is LyingBloHard will do nothing other than wave a flag whilst dangling from a zip-wire like he always does.
Are the repatriation flights done on a cost basis? There is going to be a lot of money made by some people.
A colleagues friend applies aircraft liveries. He recently did a load of TC planes that were hired for the summer season.
A few weeks after the job was completed, a big wig at TC decided that the design should be altered so all the decals had to come off and revised ones added.
No wonder they are struggling with such decision making.
Very upsetting for those awaiting flights home in the coming days; and those already paid for holidays later this year or next year.
What really surprises me is that TC have managed to sell holidays for this long; I cant remember the last time we booked through a TC type company. I thought most people nowadays booked their holidays through TravelRepublic type websites.
Once again the Brexit thread loons will cry its another result of Brexit, but its an unfortunate result of changing consumer practices.
Had the Govt not bailed them (didn’t really bail them but bought large chunks of shareholding’s in them then tagged lending on assets) you wouldn’t have been able to get at your money.
Don't the FCSC protect your money for such an event?
This is the logical conclusion of our need to address climate change - an end to cheap mass tourism as companies struggle to make a profit at the price people are willing to pay for their holidays. Add in realistic fuel taxes etc and it really does spell the end.
What really surprises me is that TC have managed to sell holidays for this long; I cant remember the last time we booked through a TC type company. I thought most people nowadays booked their holidays through TravelRepublic type websites.
They have 550 shops selling nothing but TC holidays, plus website etc. Currently over 150k people oversees with them now.
Yes its unfortunate for those working in the 550 shops. And the 150k stressing the last few days of their holidays now.
Its the end for TC now though; they wont be getting any new bookings from today - and a load of people going to the GPs to get a certificate to cancel and refund holidays already booked.
The government shouldn't be funding any bailout. I think if shareholders were liable for the debt they might take their role as owners of the company more seriously. As it is the company goes bust and all supplies will have to take the hit on the debt that's outstanding. So you end up with the owners if the company going bust with no liabilities and all their suppliers having to fund them instead. That doesn't seem very fair to me
As it is the company goes bust and all supplies will have to take the hit on the debt that’s outstanding.
They can get insurance cover for this, so probably won't loose too much (assuming they took out cover).
It's the banks / bond holders who will take the biggest financial hit; and then the staff who get the most disruption.
@chrismac^^^ shareholders own the company but have little/no influence over board decisions - other than the likes of activist investors or large shareholders who can agitate for change and have their views expressed in business media.
Small shareholders have no voice other than a vote at AGM. Too often they buy at/near top of market and are panicked into selling when share price has plunged.
When a company goes pop the shareholders lose their investment; is that not enough for you?
How many small shareholders were wiped out by Northern Rock? What influence did they have over the Rock's funding and lending decisions - or even understood them?
What happens if you need to pay for a holiday in next few days and TC goes bust straight after, they have your cash, and how much will the credit and debit card companies have to pay out under clause 75 refunds.
Sadly more and more of these large companies are going bust more frequently, with huge loses of staff and upset customers.
Anyone else thinking they could jump on a plane tomorrow, get marooned somewhere nice, and not be able to go to work on Monday?
mooman
Once again the Brexit thread loons will cry its another result of Brexit, but its an unfortunate result of changing consumer practices.
Massive condescending generalisation?
Yeah, nothing at all to do with Brexit, I mean buying in Sterling and paying in foreign currency when the value of the £ has declined since you set your prices has no impact on your bottom line...
Yes its unfortunate for those working in the 550 shops. And the 150k stressing the last few days of their holidays now
It's actually 600k in total, 150k of those are UK nationals.
So 2.5% of the UK population in any given week are on holiday with one of the major tour operators in the UK, which according to you is a dying industry
0.25%
I think if shareholders were liable for the debt they might take their role as owners of the company more seriously.
If you want to see the end of business, pensions, insurance and innovation then that’s fine. Limited Liability Companies are called Limited Liability for a reason.
How many small shareholders were wiped out by Northern Rock? What influence did they have over the Rock’s funding and lending decisions – or even understood them?
The vast majority of NR shareholders were customers who were given shares when it de-mutualised, rather than seasoned investors. I worked for the registrar that maintained the list of shareholders at the time, and the number of calls from angry punters who couldn’t/wouldn’t believe that the shares that they had, that were once worth £000’s, were now worth nothing, (they had got them for nothing too, but that wasn’t the point, apparently) was crazy.