When tour operator Thomas Cook ceased trading at 2am on Monday morning, it caused a ripple effect worldwide.
In Northern Ireland alone, more than 100 people have lost their jobs with the closure of the company’s 23 outlets across the country; ten of those properties being in Belfast.
Around 6,000 Belfast travellers have been left stranded in different countries, according to RTE News. An estimated 150,000 tourists in total are being brought back to the UK by the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) in a flight programme costing £100 million.
Aaron Strain from Newry was on one of the tour operator’s last flights to Northern Ireland, arriving in Belfast International airport from Antalya, Turkey at around 1am on Monday morning.
He had been in Turkey with nearly 30 other members of his family and said they had been searching for information on flights all weekend.
They were told that anything up until Sunday night would be unaffected, and didn't find out about Thomas Cook's definite collapse until they landed in Belfast: “We didn’t know anything whilst we were in the air. As soon as we touched down you could physically see the cabin crew checking their phones.
"Word spread within a minute what had happened, and you could see the crew were emotional. Two or three of them started to cry, and the pilot and co-pilot came out of the cockpit and consoled them as we were leaving the plane, saying their goodbyes.
“We didn’t even pull up at an actual gate; basically the plane was parked on the runway, nowhere near the terminal. There was a bus there to take us over but we were left off hallway to the arrivals door, with no staff around to guide anyone.”
Aaron’s parents were due to come home from Turkey yesterday.
He said: “They received e-mails that they were all going to be put on a flight ran by Titan Airways, that would depart three hours after their scheduled Thomas Cook flight. But when they got to Antalya airport, there wasn’t enough space on the aircraft. Places had been allocated to random people, so a dad might have been on the flight but the mum and kids weren’t.”
Shae McKernan from Dungannon, Co. Tyrone had booked an all-inclusive holiday for 10 nights to Cancun in Mexico for next September with his friends.
He said: “We only booked it in July, and had set up a direct debit with Thomas Cook for £110 a month. So the 1st October would have been my fourth payment. I just found out on the news like everyone else; no word from Thomas Cook itself. I haven’t even tried to ring them because I was told yesterday they wouldn’t even be answering the phones. I just cancelled the direct debit straight away.”
Including their deposits, Shae and his girlfriend have lost around £760 in total so far.
ATOL (Air Travel Organiser's Licence) is a government-run financial protection scheme operated by the CAA. Shae was told, like thousands of others, that after the 30th September ATOL will start to process the refunds, but repayments could take up to two months to come through.
One customer who does not wish to be named had the “trip of a lifetime” booked for Thailand next week.
She booked it nearly a year ago and commented: “We had all of our holiday clothes bought, got our injections and had all the time booked off work. It's not about getting a refund for us. We want a replacement holiday or at least money back right now so we can book somewhere else instantly and go somewhere during the days we have already booked off work.”
Padraig Mac Cionnaith lives in Belfast and is a frequent flier. He had two upcoming trips booked with Thomas Cook, one of which was for Dubrovnik in Croatia. He was due to fly there on the 16th October.
He stated that as angry as he is, “it’s easy to forget that 9,000 people in the UK and over 20,000 worldwide have just lost their jobs. What happened to me isn’t too unfortunate, apart from having to reschedule time off and book new flights it’s worked out fine. I’m not a victim here - you know?”
Thomas Cook’s chief executive, Peter Fankhauser apologised to the 178-year-old company’s "millions of customers, and thousands of employees", saying that the collapse was a "matter of profound regret".
Video (c) Channel 4
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