Thomas Cook.

[Workingman]

I don't get the maths or the logic.

For the want of £200m it has crashed with the loss of 9,000 direct jobs and an unknown number of others whose businesses relied on TC as a customer. It will also cost £600m to repatriate some 160,000 or so holidaymakers, mostly in charter flights.

But wait, it continued to operate till late yesterday evening though it was known it was going to go under this morning. In fact it has been known for quite some time that it was in serious trouble so why wasn't action taken weeks ago?

£200m pumped in a month or so ago would have allowed for a staged run down of operations so that the emergency repatriation would not have been necessary. Holiday makers would have been able to find alternatives or cancel altogether. Airports, hotels, cruise ships and all sorts of other ancillary businesses could have made plans.

I also do not understand why the CAA is having to charter flights from other companies to bring people home. Where have all the TC planes and staff gone? Part of the £200m could have been used to pay them to continue to operate rather than parking the planes up and leaving them to deteriorate.

Serious questions need to be asked about how this debacle has been handled or not handled, more like.

[meriad]

totally agree Frank... a friend works for them. How on earth they managed to get themselves into this mess is beyond me - surely there must have been some red flags ages ago?

[saundra]

It must be awfully for staff and customers alike in this situation Tc must have known it was happening months ago but continued to take bookings and cash from customers
I personally would not have gone if I had a holiday with them in the last week or two simply because I would have worried to much if the hotel's went paid by TC where will people go to wait to get back to UK it's a nightmare

[JoM]

totally agree Frank... a friend works for them. How on earth they managed to get themselves into this mess is beyond me - surely there must have been some red flags ages ago?

It's been in a precarious state for a while hasn't it? I'm sure I've heard before that it was close to going into administration.

I looked at their website at 1am and even at that late stage I was still able to search for holidays with the option of clicking further on, towards booking I assume.

I'd think that they've wasted a lot of money on the high street operations. Every town around here has a Thomas Cook, Stafford had two within a 2 minute walk of each other on the same street until fairly recently when Tui took over one of them.
It's so easy now to sit at home and book a holiday, search around to get a good deal and check Tripadvisor for reviews that travel agents can be bypassed by most people.

[jenniren]

Thomas Cook has been in trouble for quite some time now, there was talk of a bail out 2 years or so ago. The holidays they've advertised over the last few weeks were definitely priced too good to be true, £300 off this one, £200 off another. I do understand why people went for them, a great bargain and all that, but it was madness. Bad management seems to be the main problem, too many high street shops and little/no investment in their planes etc.

So sad for all their loyal employees, a lot of people having to look for new jobs today