In September 2019, which one of the following travel giants declared itself bankrupt?
- (a)Expedia
- (b)Cox & Kings
- (c)SOTC
- (d)Thomas Cook
Correct — D, Thomas Cook. The British tour and travel company entered compulsory liquidation in the early hours of 23 September 2019, after talks on a rescue package failed. Roughly 600,000 of its customers were abroad at the time, and the UK Civil Aviation Authority mounted Operation Matterhorn to bring home the British travellers among them — about 150,000 people, flown back on some forty chartered aircraft in what was described as the country's largest peacetime repatriation, larger than the Monarch Airlines operation of 2017. Keep the two numbers apart: 600,000 is the worldwide figure for customers stranded, 150,000 the number repatriated by the British operation.
- (a)Expedia — An American online travel agency, and one of the survivors of the shift to internet booking that hurt Thomas Cook's high-street model. It did not collapse in 2019.
- (b)Cox & Kings — The most tempting wrong answer, because this Indian travel company did default on commercial paper in 2019 and was later admitted to insolvency proceedings. Its troubles were an Indian debt default, not the September 2019 liquidation the question describes.
- (c)SOTC — An Indian travel brand that was itself part of the Thomas Cook India group. The Indian arm had been sold years earlier and continued trading; it was not the entity that failed.
Thomas Cook's collapse was the failure of a package-holiday model built on high-street shops, charter flights and hotel contracts, at a time when travellers were assembling their own trips online. Heavy debt from an earlier merger, a weak summer, and the cost of maintaining an airline left the group unable to raise the funds its lenders demanded, and with no buyer the courts wound it up.
The question is really about separating an international news event from Indian companies with similar names. Two of the distractors are Indian travel businesses, and one of them, Cox & Kings, was itself in financial trouble in 2019 — which is exactly why the examiner put it there. Anchor on the detail the stem gives: a travel giant that declared itself bankrupt in September 2019 and left customers stranded abroad. That is Thomas Cook and the airlift that followed it. Present-day note: the Thomas Cook brand was bought by the Chinese group Fosun and relaunched as an online business, while Thomas Cook India has always been a separate listed company and continues to trade.
- Thomas Cook entered compulsory liquidation on 23 September 2019 after rescue talks failed.
- About 600,000 customers were abroad worldwide when the company stopped trading.
- The UK Civil Aviation Authority repatriated about 150,000 British travellers under Operation Matterhorn.
- Around forty aircraft were chartered for the operation, the largest British peacetime repatriation, exceeding the 2017 Monarch Airlines effort.
- Thomas Cook India is a separately owned company and was not part of the liquidation.
- Picking Cox & Kings because it was also in the news for financial distress in 2019.
- Quoting 600,000 as the number repatriated under Operation Matterhorn; that figure is the worldwide stranded total, and the British repatriation was about 150,000.
As a single-line current-affairs identification in the who-or-what-was-in-the-news block.
No directly related past PYQ was found.
- practice — not a real PYQ
Operation Matterhorn, mounted in September 2019, was carried out to
- (a)evacuate civilians from a war zone
- (b)repatriate travellers stranded by the collapse of Thomas Cook
- (c)rescue climbers on the Matterhorn
- (d)airlift relief supplies after a cyclone
Answer(b) repatriate travellers stranded by the collapse of Thomas Cook — the UK Civil Aviation Authority brought home about 150,000 British travellers.
- practice — not a real PYQ
Which one of the following statements about the collapse of Thomas Cook in September 2019 is correct?
- (a)Its Indian arm was wound up along with the British parent
- (b)About 600,000 of its customers were abroad when it stopped trading
- (c)It was rescued by a government bailout
- (d)The airline continued to operate normally for six months
Answer(b) About 600,000 of its customers were abroad when it stopped trading — of whom roughly 150,000 British travellers were flown home under Operation Matterhorn.