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Customers accuse Virgin Atlantic and Jet2 of hiking prices after Cook collapse

Jet2 and Virgin Atlantic have been accused of hiking up its prices in the wake of Thomas Cook’s failure.

A number of customers have hit out the airlines for increasing prices by thousands of pounds since Thomas Cook failed in the early hours of Monday.

Rebecca McDonald tweeted Virgin: “We paid £800 with TC… your flights today are £4000!! If that’s not profiting from misfortune I don’t know what is.

Virgin responded: “I’m really sorry about this. All of our prices are live and subject to availability. It’s like a stepladder, with the most discounted tickets at the bottom, and most expensive tickets at the top. Once all of the most discounted seats have sold, the price goes up a level.”

Ash Kelly wrote: “Coincidence that a lot of Jet2holidays prices have rocketed this morning. Was looking at one last week that this morning would cost me £550 more for a family of 3?!?! #ThomasCook #jet2holidays

Steve Murray posted: “Guess Thomas Cook going under had nothing to do with flights going up £400 in this space of 4 hours shocking behaviour.”

Jet2 defended its pricing saying it fluctuated depending on supply and demand but that it was looking at increasing capacity.

In response Jet2tweets wrote: “Our pricing, as is common practice in the travel industry, works on a live system. As supply reduces, an inevitable consequence is that prices increase. However, we are looking at adding more supply (flights and seats) to help customers at this time.”

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