> Other government officials said the cost of the repatriation effort was lower than the cost of keeping Thomas Cook in business.
Not sure why it’s the government issue to issue flights to people.
Not sure why it’s the government issue to issue flights to people.
https://www.caa.co.uk/ATOL-protection/Consumers/About-ATOL/
> ATOL (which stands for Air Travel Organiser’s Licence) is a UK financial protection scheme and it protects most air package holidays sold by travel businesses that are based in the UK. The scheme also applies to some flight bookings, usually those where you book flights (including UK domestic flights) but do not receive your tickets immediately.
> ATOL was first introduced in 1973, as the popularity of overseas holidays grew. After a number of high profile travel business failures left people stranded overseas the UK Government realised consumers required protection when their travel providers fell into difficulties. ATOL currently protects around 20 million holidaymakers and travellers each year.
> If a travel business with an ATOL ceases trading, the ATOL scheme protects consumers who had booked holidays with the firm. It will support consumers currently abroad and provide financial reimbursement for the cost of replacing parts of an ATOL protected package.
I'm just not entirely sure how they would go about doing it in such a large scale if no such insurances were in place.
On the other hand though, in the absence of and the externalization of the costs by not holding corporations and professionals responsible for their actions, it can be argued that it falls into the common good scope of government to provide such emergency services that are generalizable across the population and from which everyone will equally benefit and therefore can also not be extracted.
There is also an argument to be made though that this has been known and Thomas Cook has been on the skids for years now, even though a layperson really can't be expected to know that when they dish out their life savings to book family vacation of a lifetime.
Again, there reckless corporations need to be held to the fire on these matters, which is EVEN MORE the responsibility of government ... the core responsibility at that ... so that it doesn't have to do these types of things because the reserves existed that would allow emergency travel or relocation or whatever is needed to meet contractual obligations.