London repatriates 10 per cent of Thomas Cook's UK customers

Britain has repatriated ten per cent of nationals who were stranded abroad after the collapse of travel firm Thomas Cook, authorities said Tuesday, as anger erupted over excessive management pay.

The Civil Aviation Authority regulator, which is managing the UK's biggest repatriation since World War II after Thomas Cook's dramatic bankruptcy, said in a statement that it flew back 14,700 of the 150,000 stranded Britons on Monday.

The CAA added that it hoped to bring back another 16,500 people on Tuesday.

The dramatic collapse of Thomas Cook left 600,000 customers of all nationalities stranded in popular tourist destinations dotted around the globe, including Cancun, Kos, Las Vegas and Lanzarote.

"Following the very sad news ... that Thomas Cook had stopped trading and its aircraft were grounded, we launched at the government's request our operation to return more than 150,000 people to the UK," said CAA Chief Executive Richard Moriarty.

Moriarty added: "A repatriation of this scale and nature is unprecedented and unfortunately there will be some inconvenience and disruption for customers.

"We will do everything we can to minimise this as the operation continues.

"We want people to continue to enjoy their holiday, so we will bring them back to the UK on their original departure day, or very soon thereafter."
Quizzed about tougher rules, Johnson added: "I think that you need to have some system by which tour operators properly insure themselves against this kind of eventuality."