By Paul Sandle and Kylie MacLellan
LONDON/NEW YORK (Reuters) - Prime Minister Boris Johnson and unions questioned the part played by Thomas Cook's richly rewarded bosses in the company's demise on Tuesday, and asked why the state had to foot the bill for bringing tens of thousands of tourists home.
Some 16,500 holiday makers were flying back to Britain on the second day of the biggest ever peacetime repatriation, the Civil Aviation Authority said.
Running hotels, resorts and airlines for 19 million people a year, Thomas Cook had around 600,000 people abroad when it collapsed in the early hours of Monday morning.
It will need the help of governments and insurers to bring them back from places as far afield as Cancun, Cuba and Cyprus.
Speaking in New York, Johnson said tour operators should be insured against such debacles.
"I have questions for one about whether it's right that the directors, or whoever, the board, should pay themselves large sums when businesses can go down the tubes like that," he said.
"You need to have some system by which tour operators properly insure themselves against this kind of eventuality."
Thomas Cook was brought down by a $2.1 billion debt pile, built up by a series of ill-fated deals, that hobbled its response to nimble online rivals. It had to sell three million holidays a year just to cover interest payments.
With the business draining cash, Chief Executive Peter Fankhauser found its lenders were no longer willing to step in. Fankhauser has earned 8.3 million pounds ($10.3 million), including 4.3 million pounds in 2015.
The Unite union said changes were needed to stop UK airlines collapsing at huge cost to the taxpayer, workers and customers.
"Ministers must legislate as necessary to allow UK airlines in financial trouble to trade in protective administration," the union said. "Other countries do it as a matter of course. We should do it in the UK."
The company's British fleet was grounded immediately after the group became insolvent to comply with operating license requirements.
But its other airline operations in the Nordics and Germany, which are separate legal entities, were still flying on Tuesday.
In Spain, the country's Acting Tourism Minister Reyes Maroto told reporters that the ministry has been in touch with German and Swedish authorities to ensure Thomas Cook subsidiaries continued to operate at least for the winter season.
British tourists staying in Sunrise Royal Makadi Hotel near the Red Sea resort of Hurghada in Egypt said they had no information about flights home.