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The travel group Thomas Cook has filed for bankruptcy. What do you have to do if you are affected? How secure is the insurance promise? Here are the most important questions and answers for travelers.
The British parent company Thomas Cook Group plc has filed for insolvency in London. However, none of the German affiliate companies such as Thomas Cook GmbH, Thomas Cook Touristik GmbH or Bucher Reisen & Öger Tours GmbH has yet filed for insolvency. However, it cannot be ruled out that this will still happen.
What is certain is that Thomas Cook’s trips that were supposed to start this Monday and Tuesday have been cancelled. Moreover, no bookings are currently being accepted. The company has not yet made a statement for trips scheduled to start on Wednesday or later.
The EU Package Travel Directive stipulates that all package tours are protected against the insolvency of the provider. Customers are to receive their money back for holiday services they have not received. In Great Britain, this protection is organised by the so-called Atol system under the responsibility of the aviation authority CAA. Tour operators there pay 2.50 pounds for each customer into a fund from which refunds and replacement return flights are financed.
In Germany, coverage is organised via private insurers. Every tour operator must have taken out insurance to be able to collect money from holidaymakers in advance. As proof of this, customers receive a security note with their booking. In the case of Thomas Cook, the insurer Swiss Re, among others, is involved. The insurances must ensure that a journey that has already begun to be carried out to the end. Also, it has to refund payments which have been made for lost partial services or for trips that have not started yet.
At present, you can only make assumptions. The applicable German law contains the special feature that the liability of an insurer can be limited to 110 million euros per year. With Thomas Cook there are currently 140,000 customers from Germany abroad, another 21,000 are scheduled to leave today or tomorrow. Also affected are customers who have paid 20 percent of the travel price with their booking or who have already paid in full for upcoming holiday trips. If the sum insured is not sufficient for all payments, German law stipulates that customers only receive partial reimbursements. They may remain stuck with part of their costs. There has never been such a case before. It is controversial among travel lawyers whether the cap under German law is compatible with EU regulations.
For British customers, a recall campaign with alternative flights is already underway. So customers can also return on flights other than Thomas Cook flight, but sometimes they have to adjust to different flight times.
Currently, there are no such actions taken for Germany because the local Cook companies have not yet filed for insolvency. Today or tomorrow, travelers can expect to return home as booked. Statements for the time after that depend on whether German Thomas Cook companies file for insolvency and how the future of the airline Condor, which belongs to the group, develops. Other holiday pilots are already planning replacement flights as a precaution.