Thomas Cook Airlines

If you spotted at Manchester, Gatwick or one of the British regional airports between 2003 and 2019, you had Thomas Cook Airlines in front of your lens almost every day. The leisure airline of the long-established travel group took millions of Britons every year to the Mediterranean, the Canary Islands and as far as Florida. On the night of September 23, 2019, that came to an end – and the British authorities launched Operation Matterhorn, the largest peacetime repatriation. This page shows you where Thomas Cook Airlines came from, which aircraft it flew, how to recognize its jets on old photos and what remains of the airline today.

Thomas Cook Airlines at a glance

Thomas Cook Airlines was the British leisure and charter airline of the Thomas Cook travel group, headquartered in Manchester. It flew under this name from 2003, but as a flight operation it had existed since 1999 – back then still as JMC Air. Its core business was flights for the group’s own package holidays; it also sold individual seats directly to passengers. The difference between the two models is explained in the article Charter flights and scheduled flights.

The airline was big: in 2018 it carried just over 8 million passengers on nearly 40,000 flights, with an average load factor of over 90 percent. At the end its program included 82 destinations – from Spain, Greece and Turkey via North Africa to North America, the Caribbean and Asia. Home and main base was Manchester Airport, and the second big base was London Gatwick.

On September 23, 2019, the entire group collapsed. Thomas Cook Airlines thus joins the line of British leisure airlines that no longer exist – two years after Monarch Airlines. How these failures fit into the bigger picture is shown in the article on the major airline failures in Europe.

The history in stages

The name Thomas Cook has stood for organized travel since the 19th century. The airline, by contrast, is a product of the waves of mergers in the British travel industry in the 1990s and 2000s. In the end it united the legacy of several leisure airlines at once.

The merger with MyTravel was especially formative. Its flight operation was called Airtours International until 2002 and was itself one of the big British charter airlines. With the combination in 2008, Thomas Cook Airlines grew strongly in aircraft, bases and routes. The competition bundled its flight operations in a similar way: at TUI, First Choice Airways and Britannia Airways were absorbed into today’s TUI Airways.

Codes

• IATA code MT: appeared in the flight number, so on boarding passes, departure boards and in schedules.
• ICAO code TCX: appeared in the air traffic control flight plan and today shows up in old ADS-B logs and flight data archives.

For evaluating old data, remember: an MT flight number only shows who sold the flight. Within the group, the companies repeatedly swapped aircraft, and when capacity ran short, leased aircraft from other airlines also flew under Thomas Cook flight numbers. If you want to place an old photo with certainty, rely on the registration, not on the schedule.

The Thomas Cook Airlines fleet

The fleet history reflects the airline’s origins: at the start it flew the Boeing jets of its predecessors, and at the end it was an almost pure Airbus fleet. The change took place over more than a decade.

Type	Period	Spotter note
McDonnell Douglas DC-10-30	2000–2001 (as JMC)	Two trijets, only on very early JMC photos
Boeing 757-200	2000–2016	For a long time the workhorse, later replaced by the A321
Boeing 757-300	2001–2019	Five examples of the stretched version, later passed on to Condor
Airbus A320	at times	Short-haul jet, at the end only a few aircraft leased from other airlines
Boeing 767-300ER	2010–2017	Three long-haul jets, later converted to freighters
Airbus A321	until 2019	At the end the most important type in the fleet
Airbus A330-200	until 2019	Long-haul to Florida, the Caribbean and Asia

Exactly how many jets were flying at the end in September 2019 depends on how you count. Some lists come to just over 30, others to just over 40 aircraft – depending on whether leased aircraft and aircraft swapped within the group are included. The picture is undisputed: the A321 made up most of the fleet, and the A330-200 handled long-haul.

The Boeing 757 shaped the airline for many years. Besides numerous 757-200s, Thomas Cook also flew the rarer, stretched 757-300 – JMC was the first British operator of this version in 2001. If you mix up the 757 and the larger 767 on old photos, you will find the differences in the guide Telling the Boeing 757 and 767 apart. The manufacturer of both types is Boeing.

From the 2010s the airline went all in on Airbus. The A321 replaced the 757-200 on holiday routes, and the A330-200 replaced the 767-300ER on long-haul. One A321 recently wore the look of the group’s own hotel brand Cook’s Club – a typical candidate for misfiled photos.

How to recognize Thomas Cook Airlines

Because the airline no longer exists, you only meet it on photos and in archives. The biggest trap is the shared heart logo: from 2013 not only the British jets but also Condor and the Scandinavian sister wore the yellow “Sunny Heart” on the tail. Several features together give a reliable identification.

The most important distinguishing feature within the group is the country prefix: British jets wore G-, Condor aircraft D-, and the Scandinavian aircraft a Danish registration. How the British register is built and how to find data on a registration there is explained in the article on British G- registrations.

The easiest way to tell the A320 and A321 apart is by fuselage length and the emergency exits over the wing – details in the guide Telling the A318, A319, A320 and A321 apart. For the long-haul jets, look at the engines: the A330 has two, the similar-looking A340 four. More in the article A330 or A340.

Group, sisters and predecessors

Thomas Cook Airlines was part of a sprawling group. For spotters that matters because aircraft switched between the companies and show up on photos under different names.

Company	Connection	What became of it
JMC Air	direct predecessor 1999–2003	renamed Thomas Cook Airlines in 2003
MyTravel Airways (ex Airtours)	integrated in 2008	fully absorbed into Thomas Cook Airlines
Condor	sister in Germany	kept flying after the collapse, today with new owners
Thomas Cook Airlines Scandinavia	sister in Scandinavia	sold to investors in October 2019, today Sunclass Airlines
Thomas Cook Airlines Belgium	sister in Belgium	ceased operations as early as 2017, traffic rights went to Brussels Airlines
Thomas Cook Airlines Balearics	sister in Mallorca	declared insolvent in December 2019

The two surviving sisters are the most interesting traces for today’s spotters. Condor still flies from Frankfurt and other German airports, and Sunclass serves the Scandinavian holiday market. So if you have an aircraft of these airlines in front of your lens, you are looking at descendants of the same group.

Bases and routes

The network was clearly geared toward vacations. On short and medium routes, Thomas Cook mainly flew to Spain, the Balearic and Canary Islands, Greece, Cyprus, Turkey and North Africa. Long-haul with the A330-200 led to North America, especially Florida, the Caribbean and Asia.

Typical for the airline was its broad presence at British airports. Besides the main bases, its stations at the end included the following, among others:

• Northwest: Manchester as home base and long-haul anchor
• London: Gatwick as the second big base, plus Stansted
• Central England: Birmingham and East Midlands
• West and Wales: Bristol and Cardiff
• North, Scotland and Northern Ireland: Newcastle, Glasgow and Belfast International

Thomas Cook was one of the defining operators in Manchester in particular for years. If you want to spot there today, you find the best locations in the guide Plane spotting in Manchester, and for Gatwick there is the guide Plane spotting at Gatwick.

The end: the collapse in September 2019

The group’s problems had been visible for a long time. High debts, weak results and tough competition in the package holiday market put the Thomas Cook Group under pressure. In February 2019 the group announced it would examine a sale of the airline. In summer a rescue with China’s Fosun group as the new major shareholder seemed within reach.

The airline’s last regular flight was MT2643, an A330-200 from Orlando Sanford to Manchester, which landed on the morning of September 23. Worldwide, around 21,000 of the group’s employees lost their jobs, about 9,000 of them in Britain. At the time of the collapse, around 600,000 Thomas Cook customers were on vacation.

Operation Matterhorn

For British vacationers, the repatriation with the code name Operation Matterhorn started on September 23 itself. On behalf of the government, the CAA chartered around 40 aircraft from other airlines, including jets from easyJet and Virgin Atlantic and even an Airbus A380 from Malaysia Airlines. The aim was to bring around 150,000 people home, as far as possible on their originally scheduled day.

After about two weeks the operation was complete. It is considered the largest peacetime repatriation in British history and was considerably larger than the one after Monarch’s end in 2017. For spotters it was an extraordinary time: airlines and types showed up at British airports that were otherwise hardly seen there.

What remained after the collapse

The airline’s assets were sold off individually. In November 2019 easyJet and Jet2 took over the takeoff and landing rights for a combined 36 million pounds: easyJet secured Gatwick and Bristol, Jet2 Birmingham, Stansted and Manchester. Fosun bought the brand name including the logo and later used it for an online travel business – aircraft are no longer part of it.

Thomas Cook Airlines in spotters’ everyday life today

You can no longer see the airline itself live. It lives on in old photos, in aircraft that now fly for other operators, and in the sisters Condor and Sunclass.

Many former Thomas Cook jets moved to new owners after 2019 and received new registrations and liveries. If you want to track them down, you need the serial number (MSN): it stays the same through all re-registrations, while the registration does not. That is how you link a present-day sighting to an old photo from Manchester or Gatwick. You can find out how old such an aircraft is with the guide Finding out an aircraft’s age.

At the former bases you find good conditions today. The Runway Visitor Park in Manchester lies right by the former home base, and the Aeropark in East Midlands at another former station. Today Jet2, TUI Airways and easyJet mainly shape holiday traffic there.

Common mix-ups

• Confusing Thomas Cook Airlines with Condor – both wore the heart logo from 2013 but differ in registration (G- or D-).
• Taking JMC and Thomas Cook for two airlines – JMC was the direct predecessor and was simply renamed in 2003.
• Equating Airtours and Thomas Cook – Airtours, later MyTravel, was a separate airline that was only absorbed into Thomas Cook in 2008.
• Taking Matterhorn flights for Thomas Cook flights – other airlines operated the repatriation flights.
• Taking today’s Thomas Cook brand for an airline – the name lives on only as a travel provider without its own aircraft.
• Confusing Thomas Cook with Monarch – Monarch was a separate airline and went under as early as 2017.

Conclusion

For a decade and a half, Thomas Cook Airlines was one of the big British leisure airlines – formed from JMC, reinforced by Airtours and MyTravel, and at the end flying A321s and A330-200s from Manchester and Gatwick into the sun. The group’s collapse in September 2019 ended flight operations overnight and made Operation Matterhorn a chapter of British aviation history. If you sort old photos today, look for former Thomas Cook jets at new operators or spot Condor and Sunclass, you keep this airline’s story alive.