KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia Airlines Bhd (MAB) is flying twice daily to send home British holidaymakers who are stranded in Spain.
The airline is one of 40 aircraft involved in what is being dubbed the biggest peacetime repatriation plan by the British government to bring home an estimated 150,000 United Kingdom-based customers from vacation spots around the world.
Codenamed ‘Operation Matterhorn’, the repatriation plan was launched by UK’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) after Thomas Cook, one of the oldest tour companies in the world, abruptly ceased its operations on Sept 23.
It will run over a period of two weeks until Oct 6 with more than 1,000 flights planned.
MAB recently confirmed that the airline is taking on the mission and that it has deployed its Airbus 380, which has a 438-passenger capacity to Manchester Airport to support the CAA’s repatriation programme.
The national carrier, however, did not provide details on the number of passengers being repatriated and the duration that it chooses to be involved in the operation.
Checks, however, showed Malaysia Airlines via flight MH8493 has completed three flights from Palma de Mallorca Airport (PMI) in Mallorca, Spain to Manchester Airport (MAN) at press time.
The next flight from PMI is expected to arrive in MAN at 12noon local time.
Malaysian Association of Tour and Travel Agents (Matta) deputy president Mohd Akil Yusof told Bernama the collapse of the UK’s travel giant would not have much impact to Malaysian travellers.
He said of an estimated 3,600 travel agents registered with the association, only a small number still rely on and use Thomas Cook’s services. The rest, said Akil, have migrated to platforms offering better deals.
It was reported that the 178-year-old company was laden with debts to the tune of 1.7 billion pounds (RM8.85 billion).
“Due to the significant scale of the situation, some disruption is inevitable, but the CAA will endeavour to get people home as close as possible to their planned dates,” the firm had said in a statement.