Originally Posted by
nowhereasfiled
Lots of unusual handling requests for early morning arrivals on October 1st at LGW.
HiFly A380 ex BYJ
Titan B752 ex STN
BA Cityflyer E190 ex SEN
Atlas Air B744 ex SNN
Turkish A330 ex IST (with an irregular flight number)
National B752 ex YQX
Grand Cru A320 ex VNO
When Monarch went bust 2 years ago, it became clear after the event that meetings had been held at a high level with the CAA and Dept of Transport (possibly even involving the Prime Minister) weeks before the bankruptcy took place. It seemed very much as if this was a well co-ordinated plan to bring about a reasonably orderly closure and ensure repatratiion of Brits back to the UK
The handling requests for 1st October do indeed seem very unusual. Given the origins of the aircraft (e.g. A380 from HiFly's operations base at Beja in southern Portugal which has little or no passenger traffic) it seems as if the CAA and maybe also the German Bundesamt is planning on TC continuing to function until late on the evening of Monday 30 September, and then, if no deal can be found to keep TC going, in the very early hours (e.g. 3 am UK time) of 1st October when all aircraft are either on the ground or in the air flying back to their UK/German home base, declaring bankruptcy with the UK and maybe also German or Scandinavian courts
One might also note that the Conservative party conference (the political party currently in power in the UK if people reading this are not from the UK) is from 29 Sept to 2 October this year. Boris Johnson will be very keen that journalists will be focussing on what he has to say and pay minimal attention to Thomas Cook - thus necessitating ample planning / co-ordination around Thomas Cook