What can Thomas Cook airline passengers expect?

Q I’m a little concerned to hear that Thomas Cook is selling its airline. I’ve booked a flight-only deal with with it to Fuerteventura for July. Where do passengers stand with this?

Anne C

A Happily, I am confident your flight to the Canaries will go ahead as planned. Thomas Cook has had a torrid time in the past few years. While its rivals, TUI and Jet2, are doing well, the venerable Thomas Cook brand has not commanded confidence among investors. In the last financial year the firm lost £31 per minute, and over the past five years it has shed about five-sixths of its market value. The firm says challenges include the effect of last summer’s hot weather in the UK, intense competition and uncertainty over Brexit.

Yet Thomas Cook’s in-house airline is thriving. Unlike some other carriers of a similar scale, Thomas Cook Airlines made a very respectable £6 per passenger profit in the most recent financial full year. It offers a range of European and long-haul routes, and is especially strong at Manchester airport, where its UK fleet is based. Just under half of its capacity is currently used by the tour-operation arm for providing seats for Thomas Cook’s package holidaymakers. The remaining space is sold to other holiday firms or direct to travellers.

In order to cut debt (currently £1.59bn) and concentrate on its core proposition of package holidays, Thomas Cook is seeking a buyer for its airline. The tour operator stresses that flights are continuing as normal – and, incidentally, that any deal will require the buyer to provide the same level of carrying capacity for Thomas Cook package holidays. So just look forward to your trip.

Every day our travel correspondent Simon Calder tackles a reader’s question. Just email yours to s@hols.tv or tweet @simoncalder