The Thomas Cook bankruptcy and its aftermath

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sn26567
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The Thomas Cook bankruptcy and its aftermath

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Thomas Cook is in talks on a £750 million bailout that will give its largest investor Fosun Tourism (China) control of the indebted British group’s package-tour business. Dark clouds in the skies for its airline business...
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Re: Trivia 2019 (miscellaneous news)

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sn26567 wrote: 12 Jul 2019, 16:33 Thomas Cook is in talks on a £750 million bailout that will give its largest investor Fosun Tourism (China) control of the indebted British group’s package-tour business. Dark clouds in the skies for its airline business...
Why?
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Re: Trivia 2019 (miscellaneous news)

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Re: Trivia 2019 (miscellaneous news)

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sn26567 wrote: 12 Jul 2019, 16:33 Thomas Cook is in talks on a £750 million bailout that will give its largest investor Fosun Tourism (China) control of the indebted British group’s package-tour business. Dark clouds in the skies for its airline business...
The airline division could still be split off, even if the tourism activities are taken over by Fosun.

UPDATE: https://www.aviation24.be/tour-operator ... -club-med/
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Re: Trivia 2019 (miscellaneous news)

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sn26567 wrote: 12 Jul 2019, 23:13
sn26567 wrote: 12 Jul 2019, 16:33 Thomas Cook is in talks on a £750 million bailout that will give its largest investor Fosun Tourism (China) control of the indebted British group’s package-tour business. Dark clouds in the skies for its airline business...
The airline division could still be split off, even if the tourism activities are taken over by Fosun.
It seems that Fosun, Thomas Cook Group and the bankers are about to sign an agreement. Fosun will become major shareholder at the touroperating division, and a minority shareholder for the airline branch.

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Re: Brussels Airlines in 2019

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What are the repercussions for SN with the near bankruptcy of Thomas Cook?

https://www.aviation24.be/tour-operator ... 1-billion/

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Re: Brussels Airlines in 2019

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sean1982 wrote: 15 Sep 2019, 18:29 What are the repercussions for SN with the near bankruptcy of Thomas Cook?
I guess some Thomas Cook Airlines Belgium staff are very happy to have been taken over by Brussels Airlines (although those who went to VLM are probably less enthusiastic).

In Belgium TUI might get more business, but I guess that the Thomas Cook Belgian business might be taken over by other tour operators who will continue to subcontract their flights to SN.
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Re: Brussels Airlines in 2019

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What "near bankruptcy"? Because a few Belgian news sites copy an article in De Telegraaf today, with outdated information? Didn't you always reject what the MSM write?

Sure - Thomas Cook is going through stormy waters, with a high debt following them. Chinese group Fosun (already owner Club Med) has already bought 25%, and they are slow with the execution the rescue plan, agreed with the banks end of August (28th?). A bond meeting set for next Wednesday will probably be postponed because some bond holders object the Fosun rescue plan (debt changed into shares, making their assets less worth).

Relevant deadline is 30th Sept, when ATOL (UK) has to renew the insurance policy, covering passengers in case of bankruptcy.

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Thomas Cook on the verge of bankruptcy?

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Thomas Cook has said it is “focused on completing” a rescue deal from Fosun Tourism (China), amid reports that some lenders could vote against the terms of the agreement.

TUI is in talks with Condor (Thomas Cook's German airline) on cooperation in the holiday airline market, but the plan requires another partner, likely easyJet or Lufthansa.
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Re: Thomas Cook on the verge of bankruptcy?

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Thomas Cook Group has filed for Chapter 15 court protection in the US as part of a broader debt restructuring. The filing may trigger the payout of default insurance on Thomas Cook debt.
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Re: Thomas Cook on the verge of bankruptcy?

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TC needs a £200M extra fund to be rescued.
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Re: Thomas Cook on the verge of bankruptcy?

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:roll:

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Re: Thomas Cook on the verge of bankruptcy?

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Financial Times: If Thomas Cook collapses, it will trigger Britain’s biggest ever peacetime repatriation to fly back 150,000 stranded UK holidaymakers and 350,000 tourists from other countries.

https://www.aviation24.be/airlines/thom ... o-survive/

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Consequences of the looming Thomas Cook bankruptcy on Brussels Airlines

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I'm rather astonished to see the little reactions regarding Thomas Cook / Neckermann future financial woes... and possible bankruptcy.

This will for sure greatly impact SN's financials and its operations. They have adapted their A32F fleet capacity in accordance to the Thomas Cook take-over.
If Thomas Cook Belgium is failing, no doubt this will badly affect SN's future figures. The "only" good thing is that the summer season is now coming to its end. Moreover, these charter ops increasingly deteriorated SN's punctuality as they mix charter ops and mainline ops in the crew and aircraft scheduling. One must be fool to do that...

I never understood SN's move on that one. Not that we could anticipate TC Group's future woes, but the take-over mixed and diluted SN's image lowcost/business/leisure/flagship (??). How many press releases didn't we get from SN PR dpt in regard to "fake" route launch in The Mediterranean with destinations in the Balearic islands, Canary Islands, Spain, Greece, Morocco...

I'm rather pessimistic in the mid-term... SN is becoming more vulnerable every day. :roll:

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Re: Brussels Airlines in 2019

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Darjeeling wrote: 22 Sep 2019, 10:12 I'm rather astonished to see the little reactions regarding Thomas Cook / Neckermann future financial woes... and possible bankruptcy.

This will for sure greatly impact SN's financials and its operations. They have adapted their A32F fleet capacity in accordance to the Thomas Cook take-over.
If Thomas Cook Belgium is failing, no doubt this will badly affect SN's future figures. The "only" good thing is that the summer season is now coming to its end. Moreover, these charter ops increasingly deteriorated SN's punctuality as they mix charter ops and mainline ops in the crew and aircraft scheduling. One must be fool to do that...

I never understood SN's move on that one. Not that we could anticipate TC Group's future woes, but the take-over mixed and diluted SN's image lowcost/business/leisure/flagship (??). How many press releases didn't we get from SN PR dpt in regard to "fake" route launch in The Mediterranean with destinations in the Balearic islands, Canary Islands, Spain, Greece, Morocco...

I'm rather pessimistic in the mid-term... SN is becoming more vulnerable every day. :roll:
I don't believe that with or without Thomas Cook this charter market is and will be there always.

And if SN has the planes and the seats for the next summer they will have the market looks logical to me.
It will be much more expensive for a new competitor to install planes and invest when SN is ready.

I never believe that the British Government will invest in Thomas Cook because the conservative party is for a free market but let's see the US also saved the banks in 2008 in contradiction with all their economic ideas.
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Re: Brussels Airlines in 2019

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Darjeeling wrote: 22 Sep 2019, 10:12 I'm rather astonished to see the little reactions regarding Thomas Cook / Neckermann future financial woes... and possible bankruptcy.

This will for sure greatly impact SN's financials and its operations. They have adapted their A32F fleet capacity in accordance to the Thomas Cook take-over.
If Thomas Cook Belgium is failing, no doubt this will badly affect SN's future figures. The "only" good thing is that the summer season is now coming to its end. Moreover, these charter ops increasingly deteriorated SN's punctuality as they mix charter ops and mainline ops in the crew and aircraft scheduling. One must be fool to do that...

I never understood SN's move on that one. Not that we could anticipate TC Group's future woes, but the take-over mixed and diluted SN's image lowcost/business/leisure/flagship (??). How many press releases didn't we get from SN PR dpt in regard to "fake" route launch in The Mediterranean with destinations in the Balearic islands, Canary Islands, Spain, Greece, Morocco...

I'm rather pessimistic in the mid-term... SN is becoming more vulnerable every day. :roll:
First of all go back to what I wrote yesterday:
RoMax wrote: 21 Sep 2019, 19:38 There is a lot of criticism on SN which I understand, but 1 thing I really don't get, why everyone is so obsessed with the leisure network. The 2 simply complement each other with the very big majority of the flights being operated in off-peak times and periods for feeding and business traffic. Sure you can redeploy your fleet to fly 10 times a day on a business route on a Saturday/Sunday and/or in July/August, but you'll simply fly them empty. And if SN would operate absolute 0 leisure routes in the morning peak (it are already just a few on weekdays outside JUL-AUG), sure that gives you a bit of capacity which you can put on other routes. But I whish you good luck to find many of those which aren't already served at least once in that wave and where you can deploy an A320 profitably.

A lot can be said about the SN network, but no matter what you'll always have spare capacity in off peak times that you can use for leisure flights and SN is really not using a lot of peak capacity on leisure flights. Remember taking over the full TCAB network required just 2 extra A320's (and extra peak capacity in summer, like this year with the CSA and GWI wet-leases), still none of that came at the cost of taking away capacity from the rest of business & feeding focussed network. And we're talking close to 1mio pax here!

Just look at LH in FRA, LX at ZRH, OS in VIE etc., they all serve pure leisure routes in Southern Europe and North Africa. Hell, even BA at LHR is serving pure leisure routes!
Why? Because they complement the rest of the network and because they often generate higher income than another feeding flight or business sector on a highly competitive market.

If SN wouldn't have the leisure network at all, it's financial performance would be even worse. So of course interesting what will happen with Thomas Cook in Belgium...
I can add another example which is perhaps more relevant in terms of airline size and strategy: Aer Lingus. On short haul they are more hybrid than SN (e.g. no business class and their AerSpace product on some EU routes includes only a snack and a drink from the buy-on-board menu), while on long haul (like SN) they have a more legacy product. And just like SN they have a specific focus in their long haul network (US in their case). But also they serve plenty seasonal leisure destinations in Southern Europe + some year-round operations to e.g. the Canary Islands. Why? For the reasons I explained above, the reasons that even BA is using precious LHR slots for pure leisure routes.

Then to come back to some points in your post:
- None of the TC routes are charter flights, they are all scheduled flights (flightnrs. SN2XXX and SN3XXX) and for a few exceptions SN also sells seat-only tickets on them. "Fake route launches" - seriously?!
- Serving both business and leisure markets vastly increases your relevance in your home market, not the least for frequent flyers that will be inclined to travel with your airline also when they go on their expensive summer holidays. And about the diluted SN image, yes SN needs to become clearer again on who and what it's serving, but that's marketing not network planning. Also, don't forget the market SN is operating in. Brussels might sound as a wonderfull global diplomatic, corporate and MICE city, which it is, but besides that it's also a market with an immense share of LCC traffic and with a huge leisure segment (and that's not necessarily a low yield market: remember, the BA's of this world operating leisure markets ). Also, of that big corporate and political market segment, there are plenty of countries from which you hardly get any traffic as a Belgian carrier because plenty of nations intentionally choose to only fly their own national carriers. Stop ignoring reality, to be relevant in size and market presence, SN has to be a hybrid airline that is able to serve, amongst others, a part of the leisure segment of the market.
- It's not those 'charter' flights that detoriated SN OTP, with the exception that the fleet utilisation increased and as such there is less buffer to absorb issues. But going back to a significantly lower fleet utilization is not the solution if SN wants to become profitable. There are plenty of reasons why SN's OTP is bad, some internal and some external, but lowering fleet utilization is the easy but financially worst option.

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Re: Brussels Airlines in 2019

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If TCB stops operations, all those small holiday destinations like Menorca, Tivat, Burgas, Varna,... will be closed. And the frequencies to bigger one will be significantly reduced. They only work because TCB offers packages (Flight + Bus transfer + Hotel). How many passengers on those flights booked their tickets directly with SN? 2-3%? ( If any...). This will significantly hurt SN's operations. Most people think that holiday flights mean TUI or RYR, not SN.

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Re: Brussels Airlines in 2019

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The question is what will happen with the Belgian activities, after all it's not because TC goes bankrupt that the market is gone.
Will they be taken over?
- Yes: completely, partly, will they take over the SN contract or develop something new, contract another airline, ...
- No: other tour-operators will absorb most of the volume, but they will be looking for planes (there is no TCAB anymore to take them from), so who will do what?

Lot's of questionmarks, but indeed without TC lots of the leisure network will dissapear unless one of the above scenario's involves continue working with SN. However even before the TC contract SN was already flying to the Canary Islands, Morocco etc. so the core leisure routes where there's much more of a mix of SN seat-only and touroperator pax will stay. Same for those in cooperation with e.g. Club Med. Others (like Sunweb) are mainly charters (HER, AYT, ...), but if TC goes bankrupt, they'll see opportunities to grow too.

It'll be mainly all those very small destinations with 1-2 flights per week, mostly summer only etc. that are likely to be gone completely. Routes like TFS, LPA, HER, ... are served on a relative high frequency because they don't only rely on TC traffic. So that'll definitely hit frequency, but not the routes altogether.

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Re: Brussels Airlines in 2019

Post by FLYAIR10 »

The question is what will happen with the Belgian activities, after all it's not because TC goes bankrupt that the market is gone.
Will they be taken over?
- Yes: completely, partly, will they take over the SN contract or develop something new, contract another airline, ...
- No: other tour-operators will absorb most of the volume, but they will be looking for planes (there is no TCAB anymore to take them from), so who will do what?

Lot's of questionmarks, but indeed without TC lots of the leisure network will dissapear unless one of the above scenario's involves continue working with SN. However even before the TC contract SN was already flying to the Canary Islands, Morocco etc. so the core leisure routes where there's much more of a mix of SN seat-only and touroperator pax will stay. Same for those in cooperation with e.g. Club Med. Others (like Sunweb) are mainly charters (HER, AYT, ...), but if TC goes bankrupt, they'll see opportunities to grow too.

It'll be mainly all those very small destinations with 1-2 flights per week, mostly summer only etc. that are likely to be gone completely. Routes like TFS, LPA, HER, ... are served on a relative high frequency because they don't only rely on TC traffic. So that'll definitely hit frequency, but not the routes altogether.
I tend to agree with RoMax that SN should be a hybrid carrier in the given Belgian aviation environment.
Leisure-passengers can also bring in a lot of money to an airline.
Just to mention my experience from last week; We went to Greece for a week of holidays and flew with SN to Athens. Both the outbound and inbound flights (A320) were completely full, and not only with Check&Go and Light&relax passengers.e.g to ATH: 42 Flex&fast pax & 1 Bus pax. On the return flight one week later same story: 42 F&F and even 3 business pax. Of course this sample is statiscally not significant, but it might help to illustrate that 'leisure destinations' should not be ignored either. Another example: 2 years ago we went with SN to/fm Faro in september , and also close to full house on both flights with a lot of transfer passengers.(I didn't hear of transfer pax on our ATH flights though)

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Re: Thomas Cook on the verge of bankruptcy?

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The UK Civil Aviation Authority is preparing for the worst scenario about Thomas Cook and starts talks with several airlines to rescue passengers.
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