Holidaymakers face two week wait as Thomas Cook goes bust

THOMAS COOK is expected to announce it will collapse into liquidation today but leave hundreds of thousands of holidaymakers facing an anxious wait of up to two weeks abroad.

The Government and the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) will launch Britain’s biggest peacetime repatriation of people. Around 600,000 Thomas Cook holidaymakers, 150,000 of whom are British, have been stranded. It could take up to a fortnight for passengers to be repatriated officials have warned

But despite flying in a slew of empty planes into UK airports over the weekend, the scale of the task, together with the speed at which rescue talks have broken down, has left authorities unable to guarantee Britons can be brought back on time. The Government’s Official

Receiver will manage Thomas Cook’s insolvency alongside KPMG, the accounting giant that administered the collapse of Monarch Airlines two years ago.

Marking a moment that may consign the travel industry’s most iconic name to the annals of history, City sources said that negotiations between the 178-year-old company and lenders were called off at 10.30pm last night.

A protracted series of negotiations took a turn for the worse when it emerged last week that the company was £200million short.

Thomas Cook’s 21,000 staff now face the threat of redundancy and its 550 shops in Britain face closure. The company employs 9,000 people in the UK.

Thomas Cook, which clawed itself back from the brink in 2011, suffered from large legacy debts. Profits were destroyed by last summer’s heatwave, which led to many holidaymakers staying at home. The weak pound and Brexit uncertainty also played their part and continued to cause problems this year. The company appealed to its biggest shareholder Fosun, the Chinese conglomerate that owns Wolverhampton Wanderers, to back a rescue plan alongside its lenders.

But as the operator sought to reassure customers, contingency plans for its imminent collapse swung into action, with 11 aircraft understood to have been parked at Gatwick, primed to pick up customers.

Two empty Eastern Airlines Boeing 767s were also spotted refuelling in Ireland en route to the UK, as well as a Malaysia A380 bound for the firm’s hub at Manchester Airport.

Dominic Raab, the Foreign Secretary, pledged earlier yesterday that no Thomas Cook passengers would be stranded. However, responding to requests from the company and pressure from trade unions, Mr Raab played down the prospect of a Government rescue, saying that ministers would not “step in” unless there was “a good strategic national interest”.

James Daley, of Fairer Finance, said: “If they [passengers] were flight only… they don’t have any statutory protection… [But] if the Government is involved, it’s hard to see passengers being billed.”