Travelers Still Waiting to be Repatriated
CHURCH: Welcome back, everyone. The United Nations General Assembly gets underway in just a few hours. But on Monday, world leaders gather to discuss solutions to the climate crisis. Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg gave a scathing reveal to the world leaders, scolding them for their inaction.</s>GRETA THUNBERG, CLIMATE ACTIVIST: I shouldn't be up here, I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean. Yet, you all come to us young people for hope. How dare you? You have stolen my dreams, my childhood with your empty words.</s>CHURCH: A powerful speech there. And among the world leaders was U.S. President Donald Trump who spent about 15 minutes at the meeting. He left before Thunberg spoke. But the 16-year-old caught up him in the corridor staring him down, Mr. Trump refused though to look her way. Well, as the U.K. works to bring home hundreds of thousands of travelers stranded by the Thomas Cook collapse, Prime Minister Boris Johnson is questioning why its bosses got substantial payouts and bonuses even as the company was nearing its demise. He visited the British consulate in New York on Monday to meet with staffers working to help many of the tour operator's customers still stranded abroad. And we get more now from CNN's Melissa Bell.</s>BELL: This was the last Thomas Cook plane ever to fly. It landed at Manchester airport from Orlando just hours after the world's oldest tour company has gone into liquidation.</s>PETER FANKHAUSER, CEO, THOMAS COOK: I want to apologize to my 21,000 colleagues, who I know will be heartbroken. You all fought so hard to make Thomas Cook a success.</s>BELL: With all of its flights grounded overnight, 600,000 tourists found themselves stranded abroad as British authorities prepared to get U.K. citizens home.</s>TIM JOHNSON, POLICY DIRECTOR, U.K. CIVIL AVIATION AUTHORITY: This is a huge operation, 150,000 people currently abroad. We've charted over 40 aircraft and those aircraft are already in position, and in the next few hours will start bringing -- will start bringing passengers home.</s>BELL: Others who'd been schedule to start their holiday arrived at British airport where they heard the news that their trips, and even their honeymoons had been canceled.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, we're absolutely gutted. We've looked forward to this for a long time. had the wedding in July, so it's been another couple of months waiting for this. Yes, absolutely just totally gutted.</s>BELL: The company had been in talks with its biggest shareholder the Chinese firm Fosun over a 900-million-pound bailout package. But to request with the British government for an extra 250-million-pound contingency fund was turned down, leaving the British opposition and unions to lay the blame squarely at the British government's feet.</s>DIANA HOLLAND, ASSISTANT GENERAL SECRETARY FOR TRANSPORT, UNITE UNION: Today, we have members who have woken up to the story that their company has collapsed. And they haven't got a job. It is absolutely shocking and they (Inaudible) fathom that this could have been allowed to happen.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Excuse me, what did you tell staff this morning?</s>BELL: But the government says that providing the money would just put off the company's collapsed, rather than preventing it.</s>GRANT SHAPPS, BRITISH TRANSPORT SECRETARY: So the government obviously would do anything we could to support, but the reality is, I think that times had changed, and this is a business that was still, perhaps operating on the model that was good for the last century or the 1980s or something, but not for really, the internet age where people are booking their own holiday so much.</s>BELL: Online competition and political uncertainty in some of the company's key destinations have been blamed by Thomas Cook, but also Brexit for pushing people to delay, making their holiday plans. For years, Thomas Cook's advertising urge those looking to get away not to book it but to Thomas Cook it. This morning, hundreds of thousands of customers found that they were going to have to rebook it themselves. Melissa Bell, CNN at Gatwick airport.</s>CHURCH: And still to come, Prince Harry and Meghan deliver a message of hope, the joyous turn they are setting on their South Africa tour. We're back with that in a moment.