This may be a cretinously stupid question, but it's occurred to me before when an operator has gone under.
Why could the government not effectively nationalise the company, temporarily, for a couple of weeks? Take the AOC & OL into government hands, pay the bills, commandeer the planes, and continue to operate the thing on a one-way basis, flying out empty, bringing customers home roughly on schedule? The planes are there, the crews are there and know the routes, would that not be more efficient and convenient than an ad hoc charter and repatriation operation? An orderly wind-down of flying operations, underwritten by government, rather than a hard ground stop with all these TCX aircraft sitting around doing nothing?
I mean there must be a reason it isn't done, but as an aviating kind of guy rather than management or bean counter, I can't see it.
Sympathy to all the TCX guys & gals.