BBC Radio 5 Live

Chloe Hardy had planned a holiday and a wedding through Thomas Cook. She had booked the trip to Zante in June 2018 for 33 guests. She was due to travel on Thursday.

Speaking to Radio 5 Live on Sunday, she estimated the costs were as much as £50,000 in total. Travel expert Simon Calder said Chloe can expect to get the costs back, but fares for other flights are likely to have gone up.

Image source, Reuters

So why didn't the government bailout Thomas Cook?

Transport secretary Grant Shapps tells the Today programme: "I fear it would have kept them afloat for a very short period of time and then we would have been back in the position of needing to repatriate people in any case."

He explains: "The company had, as I think people realise, systemic issues to do with the world of travel which had changed away from High Street shops to everyone booking online and putting these things together.

"At one stage it had £1.7bn of debt and putting aside that governments aren't typically in the business of running travel companies and the like, it was not as I have heard suggested a case of sticking this money in, reorganising it somehow and hoping it would all work. It just didn't seem like that was going to be a possibility."

Shadow chancellor John McDonnell has said the government should have bailed out Thomas Cook.

“When this crisis started I said to the government that they should intervene if only to stabilise the situation while a real plan for the future of the company could be addressed,” he tells the BBC.

“I think the government should have been willing to do more, intervene and stabilise the situation and allow a long-term plan to develop.”

“To just stand to one side and watch this number of jobs go and to so many holidaymakers have their holidays ruined is not good government,” he adds.

Image source, Reuters

Transport secretary Grant Shapps confirms that the repatriation of Thomas Cook customers - known as Operation Matterhorn - will cost the taxpayer around £100m.

Image source, On The Beach

Online travel firm On The Beach will take a one-off hit in its full-year results as it helps customers impacted by the collapse of Thomas Cook, the company said.

On The Beach said it expects to book the charge for costs of organising alternative travel arrangements for those currently in resorts and lost profits on cancelled bookings.

But it said it hopes to be able to recover the costs of cancelled flights through a so-called chargeback claim, which it said was used after the demise of Monarch in 2017.

The company added: "The board is currently evaluating the potential effects of the failure on its forecasted performance for the year ending 30 September 2020, and a further update will be provided when appropriate."

Today Programme
BBC Radio 4

Image source, Reuters

Holidaymakers are reportedly being asked to stump up thousands of pounds by their hotels following the collapse of Thomas Cook.

Transport secretary Grant Shapps tells the BBC's Today programme that if they are Atol protected they will "certainly" get that money back.

The Civil Aviation Authority, however, has told Thomas Cook customers not to make payments to their hotel unless specifically told to do so by the CAA.

Mr Shapps says that there are 45 aircraft ready to bring passengers back to the UK. He says that ordinarily, Thomas Cook has around 40 plans running. Around 11 of Thomas Cook's are likely to be used as repatriation progresses over the next two weeks.

"The aircraft we've got are slightly smaller so we need more of them. It is not going to be entirely smooth sailing as you would expect but we are going to do the best we can, working around the clock to bring people home."

City analyst David Buik agrees that the government was right not to step in to rescue Thomas Cook.

He told radio station LBC: "What everybody is not lending their thoughts to is that this has been a thoroughly badly run company. It has had far too many shops... the emphasis of the business has gone online."

He said the firm "is hanging in rags".

Image source, Getty Images

Transport Secretary Grant Shapps has said that a government-backed bailout of Thomas Cook "was not really a goer".

Mr Shapps told ITV's Good Morning Britain: "The company were asking for up to £250m. They needed about £900m on top of that and they've got debts of £1.7bn, so they idea of just spending taxpayers' money on that just wasn't really a goer."

He added: "I think the problem of putting money into it - apart from the fact governments don't usually go around investing in travel companies - is that it may have just stretched things out for a couple of weeks and we could have been exactly where we started."

Tom Burridge
Transport correspondent, BBC News

The BBC understands the government was asked for a bailout of £250m and that it concluded that the money would have only saved Thomas Cook “for a matter of weeks”.

Business Secretary Andrea Leadsom has said she is "really sorry" to hear of Thomas Cook's collapse and that the government will "do all it can for customers and employees".

"I will personally write to insurance companies to ask them to process claims quickly," Mrs Leadsom wrote on Twitter.

Tom Burridge
Transport correspondent, BBC News

Image source, Getty Images

There are 16 thousand people booked to fly back to the UK with Thomas Cook today.

By tonight, the Civil Aviation Authority hopes to have brought at least 14,000 of them home.

It has 45 chartered aircraft at its disposal, equivalent in size to the UK’s 5th largest airline.

Many of the planes have been sourced from major airlines, such as Easyjet and Virgin Atlantic.

One of the aircraft, an Airbus A380, has been brought-in from Malaysia.

This operation, code-named Matterhorn, was triggered late last night.

More than 150,000 UK tourists were on holiday with Thomas Cook, in places such as Cuba, Turkey and Mallorca.

People should be contacted and brought home on the closest day as possible to their scheduled flight.

Some people might be flown into different UK airports than their original flight. However, they then should be provided with free travel to their final destination.

Money owed to hotels by Thomas Cook is a worry. The message from the UK government to hotel managers abroad is that those bills will be covered.

Operation Matterhorn has been long-planned. But as one source put it, the next two weeks will be ‘a bumpy ride’.

Image source, PA Media

The Transport Salaried Staffs' Association (TSSA) general secretary Manuel Cortes has issued a fiery attack at the government over the collapse.

“This need not have happened – the government had been given ample opportunity to step in and help Thomas Cook but has instead chosen ideological dogma over saving thousands of jobs," Mr Cortes said.

The union, which has members at Thomas Cook's High Street shops and its back office operations, said it is "urgently seeking meetings" with government to discuss what happens next.

Read the TSSA statement here, external

Image source, Getty Images

The BBC is reporting from Palma, in Mallorca, where Operation Matterhorn - the repatriation of 150,000 Thomas Cook passengers - is in full swing.

ATOL staff are putting Thomas Cook passengers on alternative flights - five flights were due to leave Palma airport this morning flying to Glasgow, Birmingham, Manchester, Newcastle and the East Midlands.

Today Programme
BBC Radio 4

Image source, Getty Images

Thomas Cook has been in business since 1841 - that's four years into the reign of Queen Victoria.

Independent aviation analyst Chris Tarry reckons that the company's problems began when it launched a "transformation programme" in 2013 when it was forced to raise £425m to stay afloat.

He tells the BBC's Today programme: "Strategies may be fine on paper but it is implementation that [matters].

"It is against a background of despite raising money at that time, they didn't have enough cash and the operating environment continued to deteriorate, most recently in the last couple of years."

He says: "The airline and travel business are only ever really about cash and if there becomes a crisis of confidence then people book away and we've clearly seen that over the last 12 months or so it would appear in the case of Thomas Cook."

Are you currently abroad on a Thomas Cook holiday?

Were you looking forward to a break only to find it has now been cancelled?

Do you work for Thomas Cook?

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Image source, Thomas Cook

Thomas Cook has been in business since 1841 but that all came to an end this morning after the management was unable to secure an additional £200m in funding demanded by its bank, who include RBS and Lloyds - both of which were bailed out by the taxpayer during the financial crisis.

The BBC understands Thomas Cook asked the government to provide a £250m bailout for the company.

The company was placed into liquidation after talks to secure a deal failed at the weekend.

Some 21,000 Thomas Cook employees now face losing their jobs, including 9,000 in the UK.

AlixPartners and KPMG are now overseeing the liquidation process.

Image source, PA Media

Prime Minister Boris Johnson has commented on the collapse of Thomas Cook and the staff and holidaymakers affected.

It's a very difficult situation and obviously our thoughts are very much with the customers with Thomas Cook, the holiday makers, who may now face difficulties getting home.

"One way or the other the state will have to step in quite rightly to help stranded holidaymakers."

Thomas Cook India has taken out an ad in the Business Standard newspaper to reassure local customers they won't be affected by the collapse of the UK travel firm, saying it is majority owned by Canada's Fairfax Financial Holdings.