37 ms·

How can a company in this industry just strand 600 thousand people!?

vorpalhex 7y ago
About as easily as they can not pay their bills and operate without actually generating profit.
jandrese 7y ago
Mismanagement. They must have been fairly confident about getting that emergency loan, and when the deal fell through they had no plan B. Just lock the doors and walk away. If I hear that they were bought out by some vulture investment fund like Bain Capital/KKR a couple of years ago I won't be surprised at all.
notahacker 7y ago
Because you can't fly aircraft when you're bankrupt, and the funds to repatriate people are pooled by the industry, not retained by the individual failing travel company.
- sib 7y ago
  The challenge with a statement such as this is that it's stated like it's a natural law ("you can't fly aircraft when you're bankrupt"), rather than the result of a particular set of legal structures in a particular country. In the US, for example, you can certainly fly aircraft if you are undergoing a so-called "Chapter 11" bankruptcy (designed for reorganization.)
chrisseaton 7y ago
The company is done - how can it do anything when it's defunct?
- PenguinCoder 7y ago
  I didn't reach that point overnight, unlike the stranded passengers.
  - EpicEng 7y ago
    Think it through; there is a constant stream of vacationers, all booked in advance. How long do you continue to operate while not taking new bookings? You're losing money every day and you literally cannot fly planes around without cash. Also, the UK handles bankruptcy very differently than does the US. You can't just continue to operate for months/years. This is why they paid into the fund which was created to insure against this exact issue for decades.
  - chrisseaton 7y ago
    It literally does reach that point overnight - they’re told they’re bankrupt and that’s it the operation shuts down. If they said they thought they might go bankrupt so weren’t going to fly more passengers out then that would cause the bankruptcy immediately, so wouldn’t put anyone in a better position. There is no wind-down time with this process, they’re just done.
mandevil 7y ago
Thomas Cook was not a classic American-style travel agency, separate from the airlines; their specialty was all-in-one package trips, largely on chartered aircraft and with leased hotel rooms, etc. So, for the American context, think of what happened when ATA Airlines went bankrupt: 10k people were stranded, most of whom had to pay for new tickets to get home on an airline that hadn't declared bankruptcy with planes in the air.
brainwad 7y ago
They can't. They were required to pay into a fund to insure their customers against a collapse, and the British government repatriated the customers using money from that fund.

About as easily as they can not pay their bills and operate without actually generating profit.

Mismanagement. They must have been fairly confident about getting that emergency loan, and when the deal fell through they had no plan B. Just lock the doors and walk away. If I hear that they were bought out by some vulture investment fund like Bain Capital/KKR a couple of years ago I won't be surprised at all.

notahacker 7y ago

Because you can't fly aircraft when you're bankrupt, and the funds to repatriate people are pooled by the industry, not retained by the individual failing travel company.

sib 7y ago
The challenge with a statement such as this is that it's stated like it's a natural law ("you can't fly aircraft when you're bankrupt"), rather than the result of a particular set of legal structures in a particular country. In the US, for example, you can certainly fly aircraft if you are undergoing a so-called "Chapter 11" bankruptcy (designed for reorganization.)

chrisseaton 7y ago

The company is done - how can it do anything when it's defunct?

PenguinCoder 7y ago
I didn't reach that point overnight, unlike the stranded passengers.
- EpicEng 7y ago
  Think it through; there is a constant stream of vacationers, all booked in advance. How long do you continue to operate while not taking new bookings? You're losing money every day and you literally cannot fly planes around without cash. Also, the UK handles bankruptcy very differently than does the US. You can't just continue to operate for months/years. This is why they paid into the fund which was created to insure against this exact issue for decades.
- chrisseaton 7y ago
  It literally does reach that point overnight - they’re told they’re bankrupt and that’s it the operation shuts down. If they said they thought they might go bankrupt so weren’t going to fly more passengers out then that would cause the bankruptcy immediately, so wouldn’t put anyone in a better position. There is no wind-down time with this process, they’re just done.

mandevil 7y ago

Thomas Cook was not a classic American-style travel agency, separate from the airlines; their specialty was all-in-one package trips, largely on chartered aircraft and with leased hotel rooms, etc. So, for the American context, think of what happened when ATA Airlines went bankrupt: 10k people were stranded, most of whom had to pay for new tickets to get home on an airline that hadn't declared bankruptcy with planes in the air.

brainwad 7y ago

They can't. They were required to pay into a fund to insure their customers against a collapse, and the British government repatriated the customers using money from that fund.