The UK govt deployed the “largest repatriation in peacetime history” to bring home more than 150,000 tourists stranded on overseas beaches and in vacation hotspots by the collapse of Thomas Cook Group. The massive airlift, using chartered jetliners, follows the collapse of the 178-year-old company early Monday after eleventh-hour fundraising talks with investors failed. The move saw bookings, flights and package tours canceled, sparking online panic for travellers and prompting a plunge in Thomas Cook bonds. The govt said it would work to return vacationers over the next 2 weeks in an exercise dubbed Operation Matterhorn. The rescue will cost about US$93m, about 50% more than the UK spent to bring home travellers affected by the demise of Monarch Airlines 2 years ago. <br/>
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Thomas Cook bosses' actions will face scrutiny as part of an investigation into the tour operator's collapse. Business secretary Andrea Leadsom asked the official receiver, which oversees liquidations, to look at whether bosses' actions "caused detriment to creditors or to the pension schemes". The request came amid criticism over executive salaries at the firm. Top directors at the holiday company have been paid a combined GBP20m in salaries and bonuses since 2014. Prime minister Boris Johnson questioned whether directors should pay themselves "large sums of money" as their businesses go "down the tubes". Thomas Cook CE Peter Fankhauser said he was "deeply sorry" about the firm's collapse and said the company had worked "exhaustively" to salvage a deal to keep the company running. <br/>
German authorities are considering emergency financial aid for Thomas Cook Group's Condor subsidiary as Lufthansa remains tight-lipped on the fate of a unit it bid for earlier this year. Germany’s Economy Ministry said Monday it’s urgently assessing Condor’s request for a bridge loan after Thomas Cook collapsed under a pile of debt. The state of Hesse, where Condor’s base at Frankfurt Airport is located, is ready to help with a loan guarantee and is already in talks with the airline and the federal govt, premier Volker Bouffier said. The federal govt in 2017 made a similar loan to Air Berlin to keep the airline flying while Lufthansa considered taking it over. The EC may also have to sign off on potential aid, a govt spokesman said. <br/>
The grounding of Thomas Cook Airlines is likely to spark interest in the airline’s slot portfolio at London Gatwick, although the slots are highly seasonal. Gatwick is a highly constrained airport and slots are a sought-after commodity. Thomas Cook Airlines holds around 18 daily summer slot pairs at Gatwick and roughly 9 daily pairs in winter. Industry sources noted the airline holds an unusual set of slots because it is a primarily a leisure charter carrier. This means the slots are “seasonally imbalanced” and timed at irregular hours, on various days of the week, impacting the value of the portfolio and making it less attractive to would-be buyers. There is also the question of who owns the slots once an airline ceases to operate, but this was clarified by a recent legal precedent that was set by Monarch Airlines’ own collapse. <br/>
Ryanair has been criticised for threatening disciplinary action against pilots who have taken more than 4 bouts of sick leave in a year, a further flashpoint in the airline’s fraught labour relations. Pilots who have taken more than four chunks of sick leave over a 12-month period have been sent letters as part of the carrier’s review of “pilot absenteeism”, according to several people familiar with the matter. The letters state that without an “immediate and significant improvement” in attendance, disciplinary action may be necessary. The European Cockpit Association, which brings together 36 national pilots’ unions, has raised concerns over the approach to sick leave with EASA. “Any airline that puts an arbitrary limit on how many times or days its pilots can get sick is playing with fire,” said the ECA. <br/>
Lion Air and Indonesia’s civil aviation authority are pushing back on conclusions reached by investigators probing last year’s deadly crash of a Boeing 737 Max amid concerns that too much blame is being placed on the Indonesian side, according to people familiar with the matter. Lion Air expressed its objections to Indonesia’s National Transportation Safety Committee after 25 of 41 lapses found in the NTSC’s latest draft of the report were directed toward the carrier, one of the people said. The country’s Directorate General of Civil Aviation also relayed its objections, another person familiar with the matter said. NTSC chairman Soerjanto Tjahjono said Monday investigators are still evaluating input from related parties before finalising the report but declined to comment further. <br/>
Lion Group's Malaysian subsidiary Malindo Air said Monday that 2 former employees of its e-commerce contractor were responsible for its passenger data breach. Malindo Air made the breach public last week after cybersecurity firm Kaspersky Lab said in a report that the details of around 30m passengers of Malindo and another Lion Group subsidiary Thai Lion Air were posted in online forums. Kaspersky said parts of the leaked databases were up for sale on the dark web. Malindo Air said that former employees of e-commerce services provider GoQuo in their development centre in India "improperly accessed and stole the personal data of our customers". Malindo Air also said that no of the payment details of customers were compromised. <br/>
XiamenAir has established a branch company at Shanghai, increasing its ability to gain service rights at China’s largest city, especially for international destinations. The carrier said it will have 15 aircraft based at Shanghai in 2020, increasing the number to 33 by 2025. The airline carries 2m passengers a year from the city’s 2 airports now and plans to lift its business to 7m by 2025. XiamenAir is basing its hopes for such an increase in business because the CAAC gives preference to an airline with a branch company in a city (besides those based there) when issuing service rights. Further, only locally based airlines or those with branch companies can apply for international routes from an airport. XiamenAir will be the third carrier with a Shanghai branch company, after Air China and China Southern Airlines. <br/>