Thomas Cook collapses ... thousands stranded
The world's oldest travel operator British firm Thomas Cook has collapsed leaving tens of thousands of tourists stranded abroad and forcing a million more bookings to be cancelled.
Government ministers will today launch Britain's biggest peacetime repatriation effort, with a fleet of 40 Jumbo jets on standby to start flying around 160,000 Britons home.
Last-minute talks to try and rescue the ailing firm collapsed last night, and the Civil Aviation Authority announced the end for the 178-year-old company in the early hours.
The group's four airlines are now grounded and its 21,000 employees, including 9,000 in the UK, are out of work.
Thomas Cook & Son, originally simply Thomas Cook, was a company founded by Thomas Cook, a cabinet-maker, in 1841 to carry temperance supporters by railway between the cities of Leicester, Nottingham, Derby and Birmingham. In 1851, Cook arranged transport to the Great Exhibition of 1851. He organised his first tours to Europe in 1855 and to the United States in 1866.
More: ABC. BBC. Daily Mail. History of Thomas Cook.
This is going to turn nasty, a hotel in Tunisia barricaded their doors refusing to let the tourists out until paid.