The Thomas Cook bankruptcy and its aftermath

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sn26567
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Re: Thomas Cook ceases trading; UK CAA launches giant programme to fly its customers home

Post by sn26567 »

An Airbus A380 from Malaysia Airlines will make 2 rotations a day from Manchester to Palma de Mallorca over the next week to repatriate Thomas Cook travellers.

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MAN 05:45 - 09:35 PMI
MAN 15:25 - 19:15 PMI
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Re: Thomas Cook ceases trading; Condor still flies; UK CAA launches giant programme to fly its customers home

Post by TLspotting »

TUI UK Statement : https://www.tui.co.uk/destinations/trav ... homas-cook

Condor request a €150M loan from German Gov to be stay in the air.
Hi. I'm Thibault Lapers. @ThibaultLapers & @TLspotting

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Re: Thomas Cook ceases trading; UK CAA launches giant programme to fly its customers home

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Hi. I'm Thibault Lapers. @ThibaultLapers & @TLspotting

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Re: Thomas Cook ceases trading; UK CAA launches giant programme to fly its customers home

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Hi. I'm Thibault Lapers. @ThibaultLapers & @TLspotting

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skumfiduse
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Re: Thomas Cook ceases trading; UK CAA launches giant programme to fly its customers home

Post by skumfiduse »

The Nordic branches of Thomas Cook seem to be saved, according to various media sources. This includes Ving (tour operator) and Thomas Cook Airlines Scandinavia.

Now let's hope Thomas Cook Belgium will make it as well!

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Re: Thomas Cook ceases trading; UK CAA launches giant programme to fly its customers home

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Re: Thomas Cook ceases trading; UK CAA launches giant programme to fly its customers home

Post by Passenger »

Thomas Cook Nederland B.V. has announced financial insolvency to their insurer SGR Stichting Garantiefonds Reisgelden.

Source: TravMagazine.nl

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Re: Thomas Cook ceases trading; UK CAA launches giant programme to fly its customers home

Post by Passenger »

"Thomas Cook Belgium: Brussels Airlines to cancel flights".
Following the difficult financial situation of Thomas Cook Belgium and the fact that the tour operator cannot fulfil its overdue payments of the last weeks, Brussels Airlines is forced to start cancelling flights that the airline operates on behalf of the Belgian tour operator. As a consequence of the difficult financial situation of Thomas Cook Belgium, Brussels Airlines cancels two return flights tomorrow, September 24th. It concern flights that the airline operates exclusively for the tour operator :
SN3881 Brussels-Enfidha
SN3882 Enfidha-Brussels
SN3885 Brussels-Djerba
SN3886 Djerba-Brussels
The Belgian airline apologises for the inconveniences these cancellations cause. Affected passengers are requested to contact Thomas Cook Belgium. Brussels Airlines is at present working on its flight plan of the coming weeks and months and will inform as quickly as possible about possible changes in its flight offer.

https://www.aviation24.be/airlines/luft ... l-flights/
Understandable decision from Brussels Airlines, but terrible news for Thomas Cook Belgium nv/sa. Unless they find another carrier within the next hours, they are legally forced to announce financial insolvency to their insurer Garantiefonds Reizen / Fonds de Garantie de Voyages. The GFR/FGV will then decide what's going to happen. Suspension of Insurance police is 99% sure. Some touroperators recover from an intervention by the GFR/FGV - but most don't. It all depends from the total debts. Accepting new bookings is legally forbitten whilst their Insurance police is suspended.

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Re: Thomas Cook ceases trading; UK CAA launches giant programme to fly its customers home

Post by Jetter »

Passenger wrote: 23 Sep 2019, 22:24Understandable decision from Brussels Airlines, but terrible news for Thomas Cook Belgium nv/sa. Unless they find another carrier within the next hours, they are legally forced to announce financial insolvency to their insurer Garantiefonds Reizen / Fonds de Garantie de Voyages. The GFR/FGV will then decide what's going to happen. Suspension of Insurance police is 99% sure. Some touroperators recover from an intervention by the GFR/FGV - but most don't. It all depends from the total debts. Accepting new bookings is legally forbitten whilst their Insurance police is suspended.
You have to remind that Brussels Airlines actively promotes booking with Thomas Cook. And still does(!) This makes they should take more responsibility than just a carrier subcontracted by a partner. Not only do they refuse to fly new customers to their destination, they're also leaving people already on holiday stuck abroad after they promoted said holidays :x

This is what's currently written on their website.

Brussels Airlines brengt je naar nog meer aangename zonnige bestemmingen dankzij een samenwerking met Thomas Cook, Neckermann en Pegase.
https://www.brusselsairlines.com/nl-be/ ... lgium.aspx

Turns out they will indeed bring you there but refuse to get you back. Abhorrent :!: If they’re not willing to fly these customers they should stop promotion before stopping flights.

Also terrible news for SN. I can imagine TC had some bills left to pay and SN is now stuck with routes and staff they've taken over from TC they have no demand for. Even if TC Belgium was profitable, without being able to sell new holidays and without planes flying they'll go bankrupt quickly.

Taking over TC's flights turns out to be a rather unfortunate decision. This it what was said recently:

Bernard Gustin, CEO, Brussels Airlines, commented, "The combination of Brussels Airlines' network and expertise with Thomas Cook's holiday business will further improve the customer offer of Brussels Airlines.

[...] We feel very optimistic about the opportunities for further expansion as we grow our business to the benefit of both customers and the Belgian economy."
Last edited by Jetter on 24 Sep 2019, 03:25, edited 2 times in total.

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Re: Thomas Cook ceases trading; UK CAA launches giant programme to fly its customers home

Post by Atlantis »

I remember how certain people were repeating how profitable those new leisure routes for SN were. And this without any knowledge and background

We can see now how it will bring SN further into deep troubles. They can modify already their reboot plan

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Re: Thomas Cook ceases trading; UK CAA launches giant programme to fly its customers home

Post by Ge203 »

Atlantis wrote: 23 Sep 2019, 23:21 I remember how certain people were repeating how profitable those new leisure routes for SN were. And this without any knowledge and background

We can see now how it will bring SN further into deep troubles. They can modify already their reboot plan
Who could have predicted 2 years ago that TC would run out of business in 2019... Members defending SN's leisure flights mostly said that money is money, no matter if it comes from leisure or business destinations.

Correct me if I'm wrong but saying that the agreement wasn't profitable is a bit of extrapolation. The only flights that are causing problems at the moment (meaning TCB is still operative) are TC-exclusive flights which haven't been payed, not the others. I haven't read any article so far stating that they loose money on those so-called leisure flights. But you maybe have more "knowledge and background".

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Re: Thomas Cook ceases trading; UK CAA launches giant programme to fly its customers home

Post by Jetter »

Ge203 wrote: 24 Sep 2019, 01:21
Atlantis wrote: 23 Sep 2019, 23:21 I remember how certain people were repeating how profitable those new leisure routes for SN were. And this without any knowledge and background

We can see now how it will bring SN further into deep troubles. They can modify already their reboot plan
Who could have predicted 2 years ago that TC would run out of business in 2019... Members defending SN's leisure flights mostly said that money is money, no matter if it comes from leisure or business destinations.

Correct me if I'm wrong but saying that the agreement wasn't profitable is a bit of extrapolation. The only flights that are causing problems at the moment (meaning TCB is still operative) are TC-exclusive flights which haven't been payed, not the others. I haven't read any article so far stating that they loose money on those so-called leisure flights. But you maybe have more "knowledge and background".
For sure non TC-exclusive flights are causing problems as well. Many flights to holiday destinations are TC-majority but not TC-exclusive. I doubt TC payed for those flights as SN publicly stated that TC isn’t paying their bills yet SN can’t as easily cancel them outright because they have their own customers on those as well.

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Atlantis
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Re: Thomas Cook ceases trading; UK CAA launches giant programme to fly its customers home

Post by Atlantis »

Ge203 wrote: 24 Sep 2019, 01:21
Atlantis wrote: 23 Sep 2019, 23:21 I remember how certain people were repeating how profitable those new leisure routes for SN were. And this without any knowledge and background

We can see now how it will bring SN further into deep troubles. They can modify already their reboot plan
Who could have predicted 2 years ago that TC would run out of business in 2019... Members defending SN's leisure flights mostly said that money is money, no matter if it comes from leisure or business destinations.

Correct me if I'm wrong but saying that the agreement wasn't profitable is a bit of extrapolation. The only flights that are causing problems at the moment (meaning TCB is still operative) are TC-exclusive flights which haven't been payed, not the others. I haven't read any article so far stating that they loose money on those so-called leisure flights. But you maybe have more "knowledge and background".
Well, SN took over the flights and two planes of TCB bcs they were not doing good. Two years ago they were already in trouble and years before that too. The last two years with many extra events it was putting the company in more deep water.

SN took the risk and this will have now also an impact on them now.

A surprise? No, for sure not. TCB was all the time balancing on the edge.

Let's hope that SN will find some good solutions

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Re: Thomas Cook ceases trading; UK CAA launches giant programme to fly its customers home

Post by Passenger »

Thomas Cook Airlines Belgium (= the airline): financial journalists will soon discover a remarkable payout of € 250.000.000 to the shareholders at the end of BookYear 01/10/2014-30-09/2015.

Thomas Cook Belgium (= the touroperator): financial journalists will soon discover a remarkable payout of € 310.033.630 to the shareholders at the end of BookYear 01/10/2015-30/09/2016.

Two profit payouts at a tempero non suspecto at that time. But with today's failure, they were probably the beginning of the end for the two Belgian companies.

(Source: National Bank of Belgium, public search engine)

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Re: Thomas Cook ceases trading; UK CAA launches giant programme to fly its customers home

Post by Darjeeling »

SN hasn't been paid by TCB for a while now it seems... :roll:

I think we are still yet to discover some remarkable things in the next few days... Those who were saying that SN would be barely financially affected :!: :?:

Does SN fear to have aircrafts impounded in Tunisia even if it's clearly two different companies ?? Many hotels in Tunisia haven't been paid for 4 months now...

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Re: Thomas Cook ceases trading; UK CAA launches giant programme to fly its customers home

Post by Passenger »

Profitwise, the THCB leisure destinations were lucrative for Brussels Airlines: no high yield, but lots of volume during low time for business travel: THCB = mostly weekends. And holiday trips usually are early bookings, making it possible for the Yield team to earn profit on the remaining seats.

"Accountancy-wise", it's a different story indeed: THCB was a bad client. But there is little an airline can do when the touroperator doesn't pay. When they block them, they can't sell new trips and you send them to the exit. We can only hope for Brussels Airlines that they were "put on cash" long time ago.

The two rotations that are cancelled today, are charter flights exclusive for Thomas Cook. That way, Brussels Airlines puts all the responsability with THCB (as the B2B contract states).

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Re: Thomas Cook ceases trading; UK CAA launches giant programme to fly its customers home

Post by Passenger »

Thomas Cook Belgium: their Belgian insolvency insurer steps in. Management THCB is now legally obliged to declare bankruptcy.

The move from the insurer is kind of good news for the suppliers, as they can demand payment from the Fund for ongoing bookings (unless the GFR/FGV decides to cancel the trip).

NL:
https://gfg.be/nl/nieuws/info/

FR:
https://gfg.be/fr/actualites/info/

EN:
(not available yet)
https://gfg.be/en/news/info/

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Re: Thomas Cook ceases trading; UK CAA launches giant programme to fly its customers home

Post by PttU »

Passenger wrote: 24 Sep 2019, 09:27 The two rotations that are cancelled today, are charter flights exclusive for Thomas Cook. That way, Brussels Airlines puts all the responsability with THCB (as the B2B contract states).
Indeed, those destinations aren't even on the destinations-map of SN. So I assume these are indeed scheduled charter-flights, (supposed to be) paid fully by Thomas Cook. This contrary to the seats filled by TC-tourists on "regular" SN-flights, even to leisure-destinations.
What the internal difference is between flights to Tunisia (like SN388#-flightnumbers) and for instance flights to Marrakesh/Agadir (SN384# or SN385#-flight numbers), or how to tell the difference between scheduled charters or regular flights is unknown to me.

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Re: Thomas Cook ceases trading; UK CAA launches giant programme to fly its customers home

Post by Bralo20 »

Passenger wrote: 24 Sep 2019, 08:38 Thomas Cook Airlines Belgium (= the airline): financial journalists will soon discover a remarkable payout of € 250.000.000 to the shareholders at the end of BookYear 01/10/2014-30-09/2015.

Thomas Cook Belgium (= the touroperator): financial journalists will soon discover a remarkable payout of € 310.033.630 to the shareholders at the end of BookYear 01/10/2015-30/09/2016.

Two profit payouts at a tempero non suspecto at that time. But with today's failure, they were probably the beginning of the end for the two Belgian companies.

(Source: National Bank of Belgium, public search engine)
I just consulted those and while I thought it was a mistake it seems you are correct. Thomas Cook Belgium (airline and touroperator) has indeed payed over Half a billion EUR to their shareholders. In that same year the touroperator generated a profit of over 3 million EUR. Even the last one in the system, financial year 2018 mentions a net profit of over 3 million EUR (and a not yet payed out profit in 56 million EUR). It seems that the Belgian branch of Thomas Cook is (or better was) doing remarkably well. (they still have over 56 million EUR in cash on hand)

I wonder if all booking of TCB's customers were paid to the vendors through TC UK instead of paid by TCB directly, which could explain why the vendors haven't been paid despite a rather decent financial state of TCB. From the accounts I can see no legitimate reason for not paying their vendors since it seems to be a rather healthy company (which shouldn't be a surprise since the market in Belgium is virtually only divided between TUI and TCB and real competition doesn't exist here).

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