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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
Thomas Cook, a 178-year-old British travel company and airline, declared bankruptcy early Monday morning, suspending operations and leaving hundreds of thousands of tourists stranded around the world.
The travel company operates its own airline, with a fleet of nearly 50 medium- and long-range jets, and owns several smaller airlines and subsidiaries, including the German carrier Condor. Thomas Cook still had several flights in the air as of Sunday night but was expected to cease operations once they landed at their destinations.
Condor posted a message to its site late Sunday night saying that it was still operating but that it was unclear whether that would change. Condor's scheduled Monday-morning flights appeared to be operating normally.
About 600,000 Thomas Cook customers were traveling at the time of the collapse, of whom 150,000 were British, the company told CNN.
The British Department for Transport and Civil Aviation Authority prepared plans, under the code name "Operation Matterhorn," to repatriate stranded British passengers. According to the British aviation authority, those rescue flights would take place until October 6, leading to the possibility that travelers could be delayed for up to two weeks.
Initial rescue flights seemed poised to begin immediately, with stranded passengers posting on Twitter that they were being delayed only a few hours as they awaited chartered flights.
The scale of the task has reports calling it the largest peacetime repatriation effort in British history, including the operation the government carried out when Monarch Airlines collapsed in 2017.
Costs of the flights were expected to be covered by the ATOL, or Air Travel Organiser's License, protection plan, a fund that provides for repatriation of British travelers if an airline ceases operations.
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Monday September 23 2019, @08:26PM (4 children)
If you're on an airline crew and away from your home base I know that typically you can deadhead on other carriers' flights and they settle up behind the scenes; hopefully that would still be respected?
(Not to mention sympathy for all stranded travelers who relied on the company's promises).
Makes one wonder what level knew what dates when. Surely it couldn't have been much below the c-suite or it would have leaked...
This sig for rent.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Monday September 23 2019, @08:41PM (3 children)
I worked for a tiny company for 12 years and 3 months... it had the typical financial problems, but never in the first 12 years was a paycheck ever late. That first (and only) late paycheck was the clue. The CEO's constant hunt for scapegoats to blame (other than himself) was another. One Friday afternoon, after 3 months of constant "the end is nigh" warnings (nothing unusual, had heard similar warnings 3 or 4 times across the previous 12 years), we were all (7) called into a meeting and told: "today is your last day, you are free and welcome to come in on Monday, but you won't be paid for it or any other work in the foreseeable future." They did keep the accountant on - publicly traded company, legal requirements - but, otherwise, finito.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by hemocyanin on Monday September 23 2019, @09:36PM
I worked for a company once and then all of sudden, one payday the checks were late. The next day I went down to the unemployment office to look at the job board and started putting in applications. The paychecks did come in a couple days later but then some of them bounced (I was lucky, mine went through). Within a week I was working elsewhere. I did get my last few day's pay but I knew people who stuck it out. The place closed down several months later and the workers lost 3-4 weeks of pay because they had agreed to defer payment to help the company along. In essence, they were suckers. It wasn't some startup with a slim but existent chance of future riches -- we're talking about low level jobs that anyone could do which barely paid more than minimum wage. I was 6 months out from starting grad school so finding something equally lame, but which paid on time, was a snap.
(Score: 2) by Rupert Pupnick on Monday September 23 2019, @10:09PM (1 child)
In my line of work, that type of a meeting was usually prefaced by comments from the Big Cheese along the lines of: “Before we begin, I just want to say to all of you that you’re the finest team I’ve ever had working for me....”
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday September 24 2019, @01:15AM
Our CEO still had his head up his own ass in fear of being exposed to lawsuits for variations on the theme of incompetence... He promised to stick around and "work for free" to try to get things going again, that seemed like it lasted for about a month.
🌻🌻 [google.com]