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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 JoeMerchant on Monday September 23 2019, @08:29PM (2 children)
The government having to arrange to pay the crews and ground facilities and maintenance and everything else associated with running an airline, on a moment's notice, is what's utter irresponsible bullshit. Nobody, government nor private sector, splashes out millions of dollars on a moment's notice when a 178 year old firm up and says "surprise, we're quitting, effective immediately."
Aflac advertises an unusual health/disability insurance for workers that comes close to this, but "Air Travel Organiser's License, protection plan, a fund that provides for repatriation of British travelers if an airline ceases operations." doesn't sound like it's going to be covering the 450,000 non-brits flying on the German based Condor airlines, and it doesn't sound like the kind of protection plan that's geared up to start cutting cheques to an airlines' creditors on a moment's notice.
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(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Monday September 23 2019, @08:36PM (1 child)
Nonsense, all they have to do is access the bank accounts where the money is. There is no shortage of fundage. The bankruptcy is bullshit, to hide assets from the creditors. It is grand larceny, very grand. These things happen because money was stolen, they skimmed too much. So, please, they can run this quite trivially. All the pearl clutching is unnecessary.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday September 23 2019, @09:18PM
Full stop. Agree on that point. Sadly, it's also a valid and commonly employed legal/financial construct, one that the sitting president of the most powerful (militarily, at least) country on earth seems to thing is "just good business."
So, like kids on a playground crying "uncle!" if you run a business, you can file for bankruptcy protection, and whatever funds are on-hand suddenly transition to the control of the courts, protected from creditors - including employees, suppliers, etc.
At least they didn't tell the planes in the air to ditch to the nearest available landing strip, I've seen some bankruptcy preparations do things as stupid as that.
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