Originally Posted by
CW247
No, the £600 million figure being branded about for total repatriation of UK citizens is BULL *****. It's either being been mixed up with Germany's and Scandinavia's costs or the ATOL refunds for holidays which have not yet begun.
With 150,000 customers abroad with Thomas Cook UK, at a truly worst case cost of £1,000 per customer, it would cost £150 million to repatriate them. Germany and Scandinavia will have their own customers to worry about, not for the UK government. It's being slated that 600,000 holidays are booked, i.e. people who have not left the UK yet. The refunds will be covered by the ATOL scheme.
The £600 million figure also includes the cost of ATOL funded replacement holidays and refunds, as well as repatriation. If you think of the UK bookings for winter and next summer already on the order book for Thomas Cook, you can see how the £600million contingency gets hit very quickly.