Thomas Cook holidaymakers won’t be left stranded: Raab

LONDON: Holidaymakers will not be left stranded abroad if tour operator Thomas Cook collapses, the Foreign Secretary has said. Dominic Raab assured the firm’s worried customers contingency planning is in place in the event the business cannot be saved. His comments came as guests at a hotel in Tunisia report being locked in by security guards as staff demand extra money in fear it won’t be paid by the holiday company and a union leader said employees are working for the firm while not knowing if they have a job or will even get paid for this month.

Thomas Cook was meeting with the firm’s biggest shareholder along with creditors at a City law firm on Sunday in a final bid to piece together a rescue deal. The travel company is at risk of falling into administration unless it finds £200 million in extra funds. It was feared the collapse would leave up to 150,000 UK holidaymakers stranded.

But Raab told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show on Sunday morning: “We have got all the contingency planning to make sure no one will be stranded. I don’t want to give all the details of it because it depends on the nature of how people are out there, whether they have got a package holiday or whether they just paid for the flights and sorted out something separately.” He added: “But I can reassure people that in the worst case scenario, the contingency planning is there to avoid people being stranded.”Brian Strutton, general secretary of the British Airline Pilots Association, said lessons had not been learned from the collapse of Monarch Airlines in 2017.