Thomas Cook, the travel company, has announced a newly restructured airline for its passengers.
The company is planning to merge three of its airlines, Condor, the company airline brand in Germany, Thomas Cook Airlines UK, and Thomas Cook Airlines Belgium, as a single airline brand. The merger will be effective from March 1, 2013.
Christoph Debus, group head of air travel, and Ralf Teckentrup, the chief executive officer of Condor, will chair the new airline management board.
Debus, the new chairman of the airline company, said, ‘As we strive to meet the needs of our customers by offering greater flexibility, better choice, high touch service, on time performance and real value, at a time when the European airline industry is experiencing major change, we believe that our airline will be stronger as one integrated business.
I would also like to thank our airline teams across Europe for the hard work and commitment they have shown as we’ve worked towards this important milestone, and together build a stronger future for the Thomas Cook Group.’
The company has also appointed a new chief operating officer for Thomas Cook Airlines UK, Cor Vrieswijk.
The company has previously announced pre-tax losses of £485.3 million for the year ended September 30, 2012, from £398.2 million reported for the earlier year. The company revenue has decreased to £9.5 billion for 2012, from £9.8 billion in the same period last year. The increasing annual losses have been explained as partly due to reduced capacity and higher fuel costs.
