Howard: Thomas Cook bosses hit back over bonuses

Sir Howard Elston’s latest report on the big bucks doled out to troubled travel group chief honcho.
Howard Elston

Top bosses at bankrupt Thomas Crook Travel today hit out at critics who say they have trousered a total of £18 million in bonuses as the world watched their company crash and burn.

More than 150,000 sunburnt tourists are stranded in hellholes such as Crete, Disneyland and Palma di Majorca as the organisation fat cat top dogs sip fancy cocktails and play the back nine at secret Trump golf courses (my sources say).

A plane

Chief Exec Peter Fankhauser himself pocketed £2.9 million in extra payments in 2015 as he watched Thomas Cook sink. But he says the bonus was justified. The company had launched unique campaigns for travellers, he exclaimed. They include:

  • using airplanes to ferry tourists to overseas holidays
  • offering rooms in hotels with beds 
  • renting holiday cars with no reverse gears
  • backing the EU
  • backing  Brexit 
  • publishing tacky catalogues no-one reads that are used propping up a broken sofa 
  • proroguing Parliament for five years 
  • taking money from customers as Thomas Crook goes bust
  • giving senior bosses bespoke advice about how to invest their totally legitimate bonuses in Cayman Island property portfolios 

Last night, travel expert Phil from Yorkshire, who also runs a black pudding factory in Pontefract and takes the family to Benidorm each year, commented: “Fankhauser? Fankhauser?

“My God, what would old man Cook have said if he thought a guy called Fankhauser was at the controls when his company went down? It should have been a red-blooded John Bull Englishman who filled his boots with dicey loot as Rome burned.”