Thomas Cook goes bankrupt: 600 tourists stranded worldwide.

The first flight carrying customers of the historic British tour operator Thomas Cook, which stranded over 160 tourists after its bankruptcy, left New York bound for Manchester. There were 300 passengers on board, according to the Daily Mail. The Boeing 747, bearing the Thomas Cook logo but flown by Atlas Air staff, will land in Britain at 16pm Italian time. The £100m-plus repatriation operation, led by the UK Foreign Office, sees more than 40 jets scheduled to depart from cities and resorts across Europe, America and Asia today. Thomas Cook has declared bankruptcy and now the authorities will have to organize the repatriation of 600 tourists from around the world. The British travel giant failed to put together a rescue deal that would have saved it from bankruptcy. Thus began what the British media have called “the largest repatriation operation ever carried out in peacetime”. The plan to bring home around 165 holidaymakers from abroad is codenamed 'Project Matterhorn' and is being led by the civil aviation authority. The 178-year-old company has failed to raise the additional £200m it needed to avoid collapse. “The company’s board – reads a note – had no choice but to initiate the necessary steps to enter bankruptcy with immediate effect”. The French daily newspaper Le Figaro estimates that the group, which has been put into liquidation “with immediate effect,” will leave 600.000 tourists on holiday around the world, including 10.000 French. The tour operator has assured that flights continue to operate and the tour operator's packages are insured. “This is a time of great concern for Thomas Cook staff and customers. The largest peacetime repatriation in UK history will now bring people home. “Foreign Office staff in the UK and abroad are working round the clock with the Civil Aviation Authority and the Department for Transport,” British Foreign Secretary Dominica Raab wrote on Twitter, reassuring yesterday that “no one will be stranded abroad”. The collapse of Thomas Cook – whose main shareholder is the Chinese Fosun Tourism Group – will lead to the loss of a large number of jobs. The company has 21 employees in 16 different countries, including 9 in Great Britain alone. The marathon organized yesterday by Thomas Cook to bring together partners and investors in search of the financing needed for its salvation ended without an agreement. Fosun had already injected £450m into the company last month as part of a £900m rescue package. In exchange for that investment, Fosun acquired a 75% stake in Thomas Cook's operating division and a 25% stake in its airline. “Fosun – reads another statement – ​​is disappointed that Thomas Cook has not been able to find a solution for its recapitalization with other entities, its core creditors and senior shareholders”. Thomas Cook was founded in 1841 to transport passengers by train to major British cities. It then branched out to handle travel abroad, becoming the first British tourist agency in Europe in 1855, in the USA in 1866, immediately after the end of the American Civil War, and in the rest of the world in 1872.