160,000 WAIT FOR THOMAS COOK AIRLIFT
Oldest travel firm ‘hours from failing’
PLANES were waiting to fly home 160,000 holidaymakers last night as fears grew that Thomas Cook was hours from going bust.
The £600million airlift will start today if the world’s oldest travel firm collapses into administration – closing 550 branches and costing 9,000 jobs.
Experts predicted an industry-wide “bloodbath” would follow.
But a Thomas Cook insider insisted: “We’re still in discussions with a range of private stakeholders. But the board must decide if there’s a reasonable prospect of avoiding administration.”
The Foreign Office alerted embassies to what may be the biggest peacetime repatriation in UK history. Some 600,000 customers are on holiday – 160,000 British.
Unions and Labour last night urged ministers to bail out the 178-year-old firm, with 19 million customers a year in 16 countries, to avoid taxpayers paying £ 1billion for repatriation, refunds and redundancy payouts.
Unite, representing 3,000 Thomas Cook Airlines staff, said letting it go under would be “economic vandalism”.
Manuel Cortes, general secretary of transport union TSSA, said: “No British Government in its right mind would countenance the loss of so many jobs and the prospect of one operator – TUI – controlling the mass market.”
Labour’s shadow business secretary Rebecca Long-Bailey demanded the state buy an equity stake.
But Government sources said intervening might set a precedent for ailing private firms.