Thomas Cooked

[Sits]

[Hot Pepsi]

I don't get how this works. Did TC run an airline? If they booked your flight, wouldn't you still have a ticket for that flight on whatever airline that was?

[Moonlight Shadow]

TC has its own planes

[Antepli Ejderha]

Reports over the weekend that some hotels wouldn't allow holiday makers to leave until they paid some money. This is going to have a huge effect on many, not just the 150k tourists needing to come home.

[Hot Pepsi]

TC has its own planes

Oh, I see.

Well, those planes are still out there and the pilots made room in their schedule to fly them at a given time. I guess they just need somebody to pay them.

[Sits]

Something similar, if on a smaller scale a few years ago with British Airtours.

I believe TC employ around 16,000 people. Do I have that right?

[Snake Plissken]

Oh, I see.

Well, those planes are still out there and the pilots made room in their schedule to fly them at a given time. I guess they just need somebody to pay them.

And pay for the fuel upfront, and the airport handling fees, baggage handling, maintenance checks...

[Moonlight Shadow]

And pay for the fuel upfront, and the airport handling fees, baggage handling, maintenance checks...

Insurance, liability, etc...HP is doing his best impression of a Leave voter this morning (winkey thing)

[Walt Flanagans Dog]

Reports over the weekend that some hotels wouldn't allow holiday makers to leave until they paid some money. This is going to have a huge effect on many, not just the 150k tourists needing to come home.

I think the 150k figure is just those from the UK, and there are many more from other countries stranded.

We dodged this one by less than two months, having flown with them for a summer holiday (but booking the hotel separately). Their check in process at Manchester Airport was fraught, with 10* or so flights departing in a short space of time and all going through one queue, so I'd already declared never again.

*this may be a figure that I increase very time I tell the story, but it was a lot.

[Sits]

It's just another disruption story really, as their remaining client base ages (no disrespect to WFD - glad your trip completed). Generally I think the automatic choice of most people born after about 1980 would be to do everything online.

If I want to get a tricky combo of flights done, dovetailed with a hotel and transfers, I have a really great contact in the local Flight Centre I would use. But even they are only a booking agent, not a full package operator.

[Nefertiti2]

One of the banks demanding an extra 200 million from Thomas Cook which has led to the insolvency is the still stateowned RBS which received billions from the tax player.

The cost of repatriating all the holidaymakers is thought to be at least 600 Million pounds

[Snake Plissken]

Boris will try to portray repatriating everybody as his version of Dunkirk, without once mention that it was his fucking Brexit that caused it.

[Nefertiti2]

Don't think you can call it just " another disruption story" Brexit and the related fall of the pound plays a big role

[Walt Flanagans Dog]

It's just another disruption story really, as their remaining client base ages (no disrespect to WFD - glad your trip completed). Generally I think the automatic choice of most people born after about 1980 would be to do everything online.

If I want to get a tricky combo of flights done, dovetailed with a hotel and transfers, I have a really great contact in the local Flight Centre I would use. But even they are only a booking agent, not a full package operator.

No disrespect taken, but for the avoidance of doubt I only used them for the flights because they involved (in theory*) more convenient departure times than the Easyjet flights to the same destination, and booked the accommodation separately.

We were discussing this in the car today, the last time I booked anything in a bricks and mortar travel agent was in 2002, and my colleague was the same. I did use Trailfinders about ten years ago for similar reasons as yours - I wanted to arrange a stopover on the way to Australia and couldn't find a way of doing it directly, though I believe it's much easier to book those directly now as well.

Judging by some of the online comments, phone-in calls etc it seems there are a lot of people with wedding bookings affected, and I guess this is another strand where people go through a travel agent to make it easier. There's one person talking about a £50,000 wedding booking being affected, and while I'd question why anyone would spend £50,000 it's still a nightmare for those concerned.

*in practice this involved a sequence of events which resulted in my first ever breathless dash through an airport terminal to make it to a gate before it closed, which wasn't entirely Thomas Cook's fault but they played a significant part.

[Snake Plissken]

Mrs P took this photo of the last TC flight into Manchester. Coming from Orlando and airborne when the news became official, so I wonder if they knew.

[Snake Plissken]

Well that's fucking ironic. (Bloody iOS)

[DCI Harry Batt]

Isn't HP just pointing out the fundamental ludicrousness of capitalism?

[slackster]

I guess less people buy a fly & flop package from the High Street giants than before, with specialist agents and DIY options online multiplying. But still a hell of a lot of folk do, including me for an occasional break to the Med, where it's been easy to do plus I appreciate the atol/abta "insurance". Be interesting to see the final cost of repatriations & refunds here: a load more than the £200m extra Thomas Cook were being forced to find by the banks, I imagine.

[Greenlander]

Mrs P's photo back there is freaking me right out, but it's an opitcal illusion, right? Something doesn't seem right with trees/ bushes at the bottom of the frame and those to the right.

[Wouter D]

Well that's fucking ironic. (Bloody iOS)

It's fucking fantastic!

[Wouter D]

Mrs P's photo back there is freaking me right out, but it's an opitcal illusion, right? Something doesn't seem right with trees/ bushes at the bottom of the frame and those to the right.

Yeah, it's rotated on its side.

[Snake Plissken]

Safari on iOS rotated it by 90o for some reason.

[Duncan Gardner]

Boris will try to portray repatriating everybody as his version of Dunkirk, without once mention that it was his fucking Brexit that caused it

Danni Hewson and Rachel Burden (presenters on BBC R5L's Business and Breakfast Shows early this morning) mentioned Dunkirk every 5 minutes or so. Of course I realise their producers are just prompting what Johnson will say, but it was a bit silly.

My Dad and uncle were young squaddies at Dunkirk in 1940 and for the rest of their lives ridiculed the treatment of the evacuation in the Brit media then and since. "Apart from being terrifying, we fucking lost..."

[Jah Womble]

Alanis just called and wants Snake to re-write her new album.

[Flynnie]

It's just another disruption story really, as their remaining client base ages (no disrespect to WFD - glad your trip completed). Generally I think the automatic choice of most people born after about 1980 would be to do everything online.

If I want to get a tricky combo of flights done, dovetailed with a hotel and transfers, I have a really great contact in the local Flight Centre I would use. But even they are only a booking agent, not a full package operator.

Through Thomas Cook, yeah? At least three people in my office, including myself, have had our holiday plans fucked by this. They did stuff online, it wasn't just through their brick and mortar high street shops.