From the Mail...
Thomas Cook collapsed after 178 years this morning leaving more than 160,000 Britons stranded abroad and a million more customers with cancelled holidays.
21,000 staff face an uncertain future after losing their jobs including 9,000 in the UK as the world's oldest and most famous travel operator officially went bust at 2am.
A £100million taxpayer-funded fleet of 40 or more jets are today already heading to Europe, America and Asia to start bringing 160,000 Britons home from more than 50 destinations over the coming fortnight.
Britain's biggest peacetime repatriation effort, codenamed Operation Matterhorn, will see around 16,000 people flown back to UK airports every day.
Holidaymakers stuck in resorts around the world are today waiting for news about how and when they will get home.
Thomas Cook check-in desks at the 20-plus UK airports the business flew from are shut today with all customers with holidays and flights told they are cancelled.
Last-minute talks to try and rescue the ailing firm collapsed last night with nobody willing to service its £1.7billion debt, and the Civil Aviation Authority announced the end for the 178-year-old company in the early hours of this morning.
Boris Johnson today said that the Government had been asked to bail-out the business with £150million of taxpayers' money but they had refused.
He said: 'Clearly that's a lot of taxpayers' money and sets up, as people will appreciate, a moral hazard in the case of future such commercial difficulties that companies face.'
