Notes

Following the collapse of British travel giant Thomas Cook Group, the UK has lost a significant player in the aviation market in its subsidiaries known as Thomas Cook Airlines UK, Thomas Cook Scandinavia and Thomas Cook Spain. The fourth airline, Frankfurt-based Condor, in which Thomas Cook owns just less than 50%, says it will keep flying.

While many leisure airlines normally operate a fleet with a single aircraft type, the overall Thomas Cook Group operated a mixed fleet of 85 Airbus aircraft and 31 Boeing jets for a total of 116 aircraft based across Europe. In the UK, the company had a fleet of 44 aircraft consisting of a mix of Airbus A321 and A330 jets.

All except five of Thomas Cook’s aircraft are leased from a total of 38 leasing companies or specialist aviation investment firms. Aircraft leasing is common practice in the industry, as an airline is able to acquire an aircraft without having to pay the full amount of money at once.
For the majority of leasing companies, narrow-body aircraft like A320s or 737s are the most attractive. These jets have the biggest profit margins, as they’re easy to be transferred from one airline to another with little significant change.

In the event of an airline failure, aircraft leasing firms demand the return of their planes, and Thomas Cook are already making moves to recover dozens of Airbus jets. Given the firm has now ceased operations lessors will want to reallocate aircraft as soon as possible in order to avoid having grounded aircraft. Once aircraft have been repossessed, lessors will often ferry aircraft to the base of the leasing company. Things that could follow include removal of livery branding in order to ready the aircraft for a quick transfer to another airline seeking additional commercial aircraft.
As Thomas Cook owns some of its aircraft, the company’s administrators will consider the aircraft as significant assets on the balance sheet and will likely sell the jet to a lessor or airline, but this could take some time.

The nature of Thomas Cook’s collapse is very similar to when its former leisure airline group competitor, Monarch Airlines, entered administration in 2017. With Monarch’s jets returning to lessors following the end of its operations, one of its Airbus A321’s soon started a new life flying for Thomas Cook. Rather than repaint the entire aircraft, which would have been costly, the jet wore a hybrid livery — half Monarch and half Thomas Cook.

What do you think will happen in this situation with the once airline’s aircraft? I would love to know, so do drop me your thoughts in the comments, but for now that’s all. So until next time, keep your eyes on the skies.