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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 nobu_the_bard on Tuesday September 24 2019, @12:39PM
From what I've read, they were convinced they'd be able to weather the winter and wind down next year gradually if they could get the government to agree to another bailout. They already had made progress on selling their operations. They'd gotten a government bailout before as well.
The government surprised them by not agreeing to the bailout. It refused to give them more money just so they could spin down the company. The government decided it would rather clean up the mess than keep propping them up.
I'm inclined to agree. It seems like the long term prospects weren't good for the business model- its probably better, from the government's perspective, to just rip the band-aid off quickly now and be done with it, particularly before Brexit happens. If they had to do this after Brexit half those people wouldn't have the needed documentation to return and they'd have to sink even more money into fixing it.