[Closed] Thomas Cook likely to go pop. Plans being made to repatriate over 100,000 people

You’d be amazed at how many people don’t take out insurance

Me. I never take out insurance for european holidays. they only thing that insurance gives you is medical repatriation. Everything else is covered under EU reciprocal arrangements - yes even recovery from the mountains and medical treatment. If you have insurance you might be diverted to private facilities

I am prepared to self insure in the case of needing medical repatriation which either means staying abroad longer until you are fit for a normal flight or paying extra for 2 / 3 seats

But then - the only insurance I have is house and contents.

Well, the hoped-for marooning hasn’t happened yet. Just about to get on the plane home.

I don't understand why it's ok for shareholders to take dividends from the profits but not be liable for the losses. Why should the suppliers have to carry the losses and not the people who own the company?

I don’t understand why it’s ok for shareholders to take dividends from the profits but not be liable for the losses.

Considering the share price at which those shareholders bought at has nosedived 90% in the last year, I'm fairly certain they are taking a big hit on losses

because its not Lloyds of London .Its a PLC, the L standing for limited . This means your exposure is limited to your investment only.
I do have a nasty feeling this is the tip of the brexit iceberg. People are simply not spending as they used to , so luxery items are probably being put on hold. and foreign holidays are certainly a luxery item

I get bombarded with email offers from ski companies with various offers trying to entice me to book today , likewise Neilson and Mark Warner.

I do have a nasty feeling this is the tip of the brexit iceberg

Sshhhhh you can’t mention that word here 🙂

I’m always amazedaball’s how bad some of theses big companies are at er actual business though ,the amount of millions spinning around and they can’t make it work, it’s not like they started up last week.

Boiled frog syndrome - they don’t realise the extent of their problems until it’s too late. Plus if you have a business model that’s worked for decades it’s hard for people to accept it won’t work again..

There are multiple factors here - whilst brexit uncertainty and a related devaluing £ is going to have some impact, diy holidays, airbnb, low cost airlines and some poor offerings from some of the the package holiday companies are also factors.
It's never been easier to put your own holiday together either completely independently or by adding accommodation and hire car to flight bookings from the low costs.
I'm in my late 40s and I've only booked 2 package holidays in my life - unless I'm looking at a dedicated activity holiday, I can't see it ever happening again.

whilst brexit uncertainty and a related devaluing £ is going to have some impact, diy holidays, airbnb, low cost airlines and some poor offerings from some of the the package holiday companies are also factors.

I think the B word has actually put the accelerator to the floor on businesses that were on a dodgy footing TBH.

If you book flights and hotels through Expedia you get ATOL protection these days, so that's one slight advantage that tradional package had eroded.

Just read an article online that said they've paid out 1.2 billion quid in interest since the last massive loans taken to stave off bankruptcy in 2011. 😳

I don’t understand why it’s ok for shareholders to take dividends from the profits but not be liable for the losses.

Got a pension? Where do you think they invest your money?
If a company is doing so badly then the shareholders lose their money. Isn’t that enough?
What you should be asking is why it was deemed appropriate to borrow so much money for no result. The board is responsible for this but in our current state they’ll just take their golden goodbyes and move onto the next business.

Oh dear..

https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/thomas-cook-news-latest-update-essential-advice-holidays-help-fly-uk-a9116031.html

Pop.😟

Didn't Thomas Cook get out troops over to try and relieve Gordon of Khartoum?

Sad end to an old company.

Just read that they reckon it will take around 2 weeks to repatriate everyone so some might be getting a longer holiday then planned.

RBS are, I think, the lead lending bank to TC; as such they will have been instrumental in demanding the £200mill additional funding requirement.
So, a bank bailed out by Gov and still 60% state owned (bailed out and owned by us, taxpayers) is pushing a company towards administration; Gov should be making the call - not RBS.
In addition and if TC goes pop, how much of the estimated £600mill repatriation cost will be covered by ATOL and how much will be covered by Gov?
For reference the current ATOL levy is, I believe, £2.50 per person; how much money do they have? Do they insure the risk?

Some customers being hit for hotel fees not paid by TC. What a bloody position to be put in!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-49787563

Just taxied past a bunch of TCX jets on remote stands at Manchester; some impounded as @vinnyeh indicates.

A sad day.

I am prepared to self insure in the case of needing medical repatriation which either means staying abroad longer until you are fit for a normal flight or paying extra for 2 / 3 seats

I think that’s quite brave, personally... Mountain rescue is not always free across Europe, especially in Switzerland. Make sure you crash on the French side of the border.

I have a £100 annual policy which covers nearly all sports, trekking, diving, and racing (bikes) along with a £20 policy from InReach for search and location.

how many multiples of 200 million do you think it will end up costing the treasury to get it all sorted out?

Just read that they reckon it will take around 2 weeks to repatriate everyone so some might be getting a longer holiday then planned.

A bloke on the telly last night who had just arrived at Majorcca was saying that. Not much of a holiday though once the hotel have turfed you out because they're not getting paid. ☹️

Something I can't work out.

£600 million repatriation plan.

150,000 stranded holiday makers

600M/150K = £4000

I know this is being organised by the people who organised the Brexit freight ferry company fiasco, but how are they getting them all home? Private jet? Sedan chair from their hotel to the airport? Do they get to keep the plane afterwards?

Was due to have a week in Salou mid October. The one time I actually start to look forward to a holiday and ****ing TC go bust! (Works been stupid busy for months)

That said if feel more for the 9k jobs lost, Holidays come and go.

I know this is being organised by the people who organised the Brexit freight ferry company fiasco, but how are they getting them all home? Private jet? Sedan chair from their hotel to the airport? Do they get to keep the plane afterwards?

Well that’s not far from the cost of the average family Balearic holiday.  Add in the fees that BA and EasyJet will be charging for their Services, to relocate their planes, shift staff around, hotels that need to be paid, airport shuttles, compensation and it’s quite easy to see how you could get to that cost.

I know this is being organised by the people who organised the Brexit freight ferry company fiasco, but how are they getting them all home? Private jet? Sedan chair from their hotel to the airport? Do they get to keep the plane afterwards?

A little more sympathy might be nice also - as much as we feel for Halifaxpete above missing out on his holiday, imagine what you’d feel like if you were in Ibiza right now.  Probably wracked with worry for the last week and likely to be spending a fair bit of time stuffed in a claustrophobic airport with a couple of kids, wondering if the next plane will be yours.   Certainly a stressful time and a ruined holiday for sure.

Don't forget about the deaths of people on TC holidays...
https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/midlands-news/brits-who-died-thomas-cook-16208904
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/may/13/thomas-cook-shame-over-deaths-children-in-corfu

It's been going that way for years - poor leadership, lax safety standards, shoestring budgets. We've stayed away from booking with them for years and I suspect many people have.

It's not a Brexit thing either as they've been going south for a decade.

And don't get me started on TJ's travel insurance! :rage:

It’s not a Brexit thing either as they’ve been going south for a decade.

probably not, but another straw on the proverbial came!.

Its not though is it. One way flights home on guaranteed full planes .. £200 each for typical European flight. And that only comes to £30 million. The hotels are already protected with ATOL ...

Relocating planes and staff where paying customers are is all part of the business that is all added on to the flight price anyways.

The £600 million cost is typical fake news.

I am prepared to self insure in the case of needing medical repatriation which either means staying abroad longer until you are fit for a normal flight or paying extra for 2 / 3 seats

and if you were to have a serious spinal injury (or the like)? How many £ks do you need in the bank for that?

Our place
@Halifaxpete,
I've pm'ed you, might be able to help with accommodation, I live 40 min south of Salou.

how many multiples of 200 million do you think it will end up costing the treasury to get it all sorted out?

The problem with provided the 200 million is the chances are it would have just punted the problem down the road for a few months/year.

Something I can’t work out.

£600 million repatriation plan.

150,000 stranded holiday makers

600M/150K = £4000

Its a plan. You're not condemning yourself to spend all the money, you're making sure theres enough money available. It ok to have change left over at the end. But there will be no small amount of cost involved in having to devise unique travel , sccommodation arrangements and transfers for all those travellers and and try and communicated those arrangements with and field enquires from them all. The flight price isn't necessarily the biggest cost.

I feel sad for the staff. We were overseas when the Icelandic volcano erupted and they were fantastic. We had only booked flights with them but they said it was their responsibility to accommodate us until they could fly us home and put us up in a nice hotel. They kept us informed of the latest news at a 10am briefing every day and we had 2 weeks extra holiday. Have since used them a number of times solely due to the way they looked after my family.

Knew some people who were stuck that had flown Ryan Air, their experience was somewhat different!

Relocating planes and staff where paying customers are is all part of the business that is all added on to the flight price anyways.

Guessing that mikertroid or one of the other full time professional pilots on here can answer more fully but relocating planes and staff is an astronomical headache. No-one has planes just sitting around waiting for this sort of thing so who's flights do you pull, who do you prioritise, which aircrew are going to fly it when they're all on nearly max hours anyway....?

It took weeks after 9/11 and Iceland to get all the planes back to where they should have been. This won't be as bad but there'll be knock-on implications for lots of other flights too.

I think the B word has actually put the accelerator to the floor on businesses that were on a dodgy footing TBH.

Agreed, it was the same with the credit crunch and every economic disaster before that. It's like financial Darwinism. Business that failed to innovate, adapt and evolve in favour of trading on past glory or worse get greedy when things are good and fail to invest aren't ready to survive the next crisis, because there will always be one.

I think the B word has actually put the accelerator to the floor on businesses that were on a dodgy footing TBH.

Brexit was always going to have consequences, being able to dismiss any potential negatives as project fear was an incredibly useful tactic.

Maybe that's actually a benefit of Brexit, helping to weed out the poorer companies

If course that's little consolation for the people with ruined holidays, huge bills and 1000s who have lost their jobs.

Raises questions of auditors again too, who did their books?

No-one has planes just sitting around

At any given time there are loads of unallocated lease aircraft sitting around so for the numbers we're talking it should be no issue allocating aircraft. The challenge is getting the aircraft to the people...they could be 12hr flight time away.

Some passengers will be bumped onto spare capacity in the normal schedules airline network, others will be catered for by leased aircraft. Short term interim lift is big business and a specific niche sector in the aircraft leasing world.

aren’t ready to survive the next crisis, because there will always be one.

Tho this is one that was directly voted for!

A lot of the LoCos will have spare capacity at the moment as fleets are planned on the summer period.

It will also suit airlines to consolidate flights to free up capacity for the repatriation. If you can consolidate 4 half empty Malaga flights into 3, you fly the same number of pax for less.

Schedules are planned seasonally - summer (apr-Oct) & winter - and if you don’t fly a certain percentage of your slots (high 90%) you will lose them. This is actually a good time of year for spare capacity.

RBS are, I think, the lead lending bank to TC; as such they will have been instrumental in demanding the £200mill additional funding requirement.
So, a bank bailed out by Gov and still 60% state owned (bailed out and owned by us, taxpayers) is pushing a company towards administration; Gov should be making the call – not RBS.
In addition and if TC goes pop, how much of the estimated £600mill repatriation cost will be covered by ATOL and how much will be covered by Gov?
For reference the current ATOL levy is, I believe, £2.50 per person; how much money do they have? Do they insure the risk?

I don't know if RBS are their Bankers, it's usually spread about a bit, and I'm not one to run to their defence, but they're going to get hosed on this.

It would have been a tough decision for them, Thomas Cook didn't need £200m to turn itself around, it needed £200m to stay afloat for a few more weeks to try to work out a survival plan. Their plan prior to collapse was to borrow £900m to restructure the business.

Given how utterly chaotic the UK has been in recently years and how it's only likely to get worse, do we really want to sink another £1bn into a holiday company that lost £1.5bn last year, but paid it's board over £200m in bonuses in the last few years?

I personally don't think it will cost £600 to repatriate everyone - it's pure Brexit spin "greatest repatriation since WW2" FFS, every blue passport carrying Brexiteer isn't thinking "well, this is unfortunate" they're too busy having a chubby about how it's Dunkirk all over again and how Great we are.

Me. I never take out insurance for european holidays. they only thing that insurance gives you is medical repatriation. Everything else is covered under EU reciprocal arrangements – yes even recovery from the mountains and medical treatment. If you have insurance you might be diverted to private facilities

I am prepared to self insure in the case of needing medical repatriation which either means staying abroad longer until you are fit for a normal flight or paying extra for 2 / 3 seats

But then – the only insurance I have is house and contents.

I had to pay £5,000 for ambulances in France after an accident. I was only in their care for one afternoon, the EU health card does not cover everything! Friends have had bills over £10k in France too, we all used our (extreme cover) travel insurance well!

Anyway, if I was the personal ultimately in charge of whether we bailed them out, or let them fail, a bit part of my decision would be made with a calendar and not a calculator.

Even those who are a bit 'free and easy' with school timetables are back home now, Half-term is a while away, Ski season is miles off. The 3rd week in Sept might just be the best week of the year to let a holiday company fail.

"For reference the current ATOL levy is, I believe, £2.50 per person; how much money do they have? Do they insure the risk?"

According to their 2018 accounts, the Air Travel Trust had just under £170 million. Slightly less cash.

Me. I never take out insurance for european holidays. they only thing that insurance gives you is medical repatriation. Everything else is covered under EU reciprocal arrangements – yes even recovery from the mountains and medical treatment. If you have insurance you might be diverted to private facilities

I am prepared to self insure in the case of needing medical repatriation which either means staying abroad longer until you are fit for a normal flight or paying extra for 2 / 3 seats

I got air ambulance'd off a mountain side in Switzerland (so not technically EU but EHIC is valid there) and the overall bill that my very good travel insurance picked up for helimed, 4 days in a Swiss hospital, a private air ambulance flight back to the UK and transport from Biggin Hill to my parents house was over £25,000.

So yeah, insurance everytime for me that specifies cycling / MTBing!

Me. I never take out insurance for european holidays. they only thing that insurance gives you is medical repatriation. Everything else is covered under EU reciprocal arrangements – yes even recovery from the mountains and medical treatment. If you have insurance you might be diverted to private facilities

I am prepared to self insure in the case of needing medical repatriation which either means staying abroad longer until you are fit for a normal flight or paying extra for 2 / 3 seats

I'm all for self-insuring where possible, but I think you should reconsider - 6 ribs and punctured lung in France in March. EHIC covers 80% of the hospital bill, but not helicopters, ambulances home etc. If I hadn't been insured (£60 a year) the bills that I know about would have been ca. £5000, that's not including the ground ambulance across France back to the UK.

Various branches of "thomas cook" are flying today bringing people home already. Some of the staff are still working. Id be very wary of what promises I'd been given regarding pay!

If you worked for Condor/another subsidiary, you might as well fly today and keep your hours up and rating current.

Various branches of “thomas cook” are flying today bringing people home already. Some of the staff are still working. Id be very wary of what promises I’d been given regarding pay!

It would make amazing sense for ATOL just to pay TC airline division to carry on as they were untill everyone is home, or is that to simple ?

I usually self insure where legally possible, but a friend of my mother tripped in a hotel in Spain. The repatriation cost 17k. Another friend had a heart attack in Spain and was not covered, nurses brought a card reader every day till there was no money left, cost over 10k.

Lesson learnt.

big queue of people outside my local TC this morning....even though it was close/lights off/clearly not going to open. there was also a queue out the door of TUi which i presumed was people trying to rearrange holidays. not pleasant for the queuers or staff today.

It would make amazing sense for ATOL just to pay TC airline division to carry on as they were untill everyone is home, or is that to simple ?

A couple of pages back, it was explained that airlines need licences to fly planes, and once bankrupt, these automatically expire. That was the gist of it anyway.

Yes, I would imagine insurance also might be an issue.
Don't the R A F have a few jets that are sat around idle. Why not use them for shuttle runs between say Majorca and Barcelona or Madrid. You could make lots of 30 min flights to hubs that have hundreds of planes with seats every day, although mostly won't be going to the airport of your choice
Plus its an insurance job, which we all know increased the cost of everything, car body repairs and windscreen repair the first thing that they ask is Is this an insurance claim...

If it comes to it though there are always ways to get home, you just have to be prepared to grit your teeth and cough up for lastinute flights, trains, taxi rides, ferries etc via Germany or Geneva but usually, with the Web, a smart phone, some lateral thinking and a willingness to be creative its doable. However getting refunds probably not so much if at all.

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/09/23/business/thomas-cook-collapse/index.html

150 000 people left in the lurch at airports, or flexing their credit cards to stay in hotels waiting for the flight back, probably 50,000 voted leave
Good work, just remember, they need us more than we need them.

TV reports at the airports have made me cringe a bit.

One lady in tears at the airport who 'just wanted to get home'. Had been at the airport for 12 whole hours and her 13yr old son was 'starving' because he won't eat any of the food they serve at airports. Get a grip love. Meanwhile my wife spent the evening on Linkedin commiserating with loads of friends/ex-colleagues (she spent half her career in the travel/tourism industry) who had just lost their jobs and helping them start the process of finding where they might find employment. No redundancy payout, mortgages to pay, families to feed. She's an inhouse recruiter and has already got a mailbox full of CVs to help polish from ex Thomas Cook employees who she knows. Yet some lass stuck on holiday with a 'starving' fussy son gets the TV highlights.

Quite a few teenage kids of school age stuck on holiday it seems from the footage. Defying the ban and taking kids off at the end of the school year is one thing - missing a couple of weeks at the beginning of the year when expectations and key work is being done is not cool.

I had to pay £5,000 for ambulances in France after an accident. I was only in their care for one afternoon, the EU health card does not cover everything!

I pay Spanish social security, which gives me access to their version of the NHS - but that doesn't cover me (or any Spaniard) if I need to be helicoptered off a mountain. So I very much doubt that the EU health card would, either. So get insurance.

@Convert

My SIL has worked for them for almost 20 yrs. What they dont report is that staff are having to pay for themselves to get home. They are not included in the repatriation and she has friends trying to get flights from the US and being quoted opportunistic costs for flights and hotel rooms. Absolutely appalling.

<str

ong>@molgrim
We too pay Spanish taxes and being in Cataluña, we get Catsalut medical cover. MrsPB had a mountainbike otb on a remote trail and broke her collarbone, her friend phoned the ambulance and due to her position up a goat track, the Bombers arrived with a 4x4 and stretchered her to that then on to the ambulance to hospital. Several x rays, pain relief, etc etc, total cost nowt.