Bosses at Thomas Cook pocketed a £47million ($NZ93million) pay bonanza as the firm headed for the rocks, reports the Daily Mail.
Last night, after the travel operator was dramatically declared bankrupt, furious customers demanded executives hand back some of their "rewards for failure".
Boris Johnson also intervened, asking why directors had paid themselves large sums as the company went "down the tubes".
Ministers have opened an investigation into how Thomas Cook sank under £1.6billion of debt.
Up to a million customers have seen their holidays thrown into chaos by the collapse of the 178-year-old firm. Many are unlikely to receive compensation.
The UK authorities yesterday began to fly home the first of the estimated 156,000 Britons
stranded abroad. The operation – the country's largest ever peacetime repatriation – will cost taxpayers an estimated £100million ($NZ197million) . Amid travel mayhem around the globe:
* Despairing holidaymakers had to barricade themselves in hotel rooms after staff threatened to throw them out unless they personally paid thousands of pounds owed by Thomas Cook;
* Others chose to flee their hotels after being hit with impromptu demands for huge bills they thought they had paid;
* There were long delays at airports as the Civil Aviation Authority began the first stage of the repatriation operation;
* Up to 500,000 Thomas Cook customers from other countries, mostly Germany and in Scandinavia, are also affected;
* Business Secretary Andrea Leadsom asked the Insolvency Service to launch an investigation into the role of management in the collapse;
* Rival airlines were accused by some customers of behaving like vultures by hiking their prices to cash in on desperate customers;
* City investors who bet against the firm were set for a £250million windfall;
* A row broke out over whether the Government should have intervened;
* Some selfless Thomas Cook staff turned out to help customers, even though they had no prospect of being paid.
Thomas Cook folded in the early hours of yesterday putting 22,000 jobs at risk worldwide, including 9,000 in the UK and signalling the closure of more than 600 agency branches.
A Daily Mail audit yesterday revealed that the three chief executives who have led the beleaguered firm since 2007 raked in more than £36.1million in pay and bonuses.
Peter Fankhauser, the Swiss chief executive taken on in the immediate years before its collapse yesterday, has taken home £8.4millon since 2014, including £4.6million in bonus payments linked to performance.
His predecessor Harriet Green, who ran the firm between 2012 and 2014 and faced controversy over an £80,000 yearly hotel and travel bill, took home almost £11million in total pay. In 2015 alone, she received £6.3million despite only working for two months of that financial year.
The businesswoman ultimately donated a third of a £5.6million share award to charities picked by the parents of Bobby and Christi Shepherd, who died of carbon monoxide on a 2006 Thomas Cook holiday in Corfu.
The most controversial payments were received by Manny Fontenla-Novoa, who saw the company's share price drastically tumble under his leadership between 2007 and 2011.
The Spanish-British businessman's huge pay packages totalling £16.8million led the company to introduce internal 'clawback' measures in 2012 that could see exaggerated bonuses recouped.
Meanwhile, Thomas Cook's former chief financial officer, Michael Healy, took home a total of £8.3million between 2012 and 2018 in salary and bonuses. And non-executive chairman Frank Meysman earned £2.2million in salary and benefits between 2018 and 2012, totalling almost £47 million for the five.
The Prime Minister intervened during an interview at the British consulate general's residence in New York. He said: "I think the questions we've got to ask ourselves now: how can this thing be stopped from happening in the future?
"How can we make sure that tour operators take proper precautions with their business models where you don't end up with a situation where the taxpayer, the state, is having to step in and bring people home?
"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."
In a letter to the Insolvency Service, Miss Leadsom ordered scrutiny of "whether any action by directors has caused detriment to creditors or to the pension schemes".
A senior government source said Thomas Cook's bosses had "legitimate questions to answer" about their stewardship of the company.
Tom Patrick, 69, from Cookstown, Northern Ireland, who was on holiday with his wife Valerie, was one of the devastated customers.
"They ripped the company apart but they'll be home and dry while their employees suffer and thousands of holidays are ruined," he said. "They shouldn't get a penny of a performance-related bonus, by definition. You can't reward failure on this scale with millions of pounds, it's ridiculous." Lesley Mance, 29, from Reading, said: "I am furious they were paid so much when they were completely incapable of keeping the company afloat or avoiding this mayhem."
The assistant accountant was threatened with eviction from her hotel in Tenerife if she did not pay almost £1,000 ($NZ197million) in additional fees owed by Thomas Cook.
She said: "If executives had any decency they would return the money to the people who are suffering because of their incompetence."
Thomas Cook cabin crew member Elizabeth Telford, 56, from Newcastle, accused Mr Fankhauser of being blind to changes in a travel industry confronted with more choice in the internet age.
Hopes of recourse however were dashed last night after legal experts said that it was highly unlikely that bonuses would be paid back because there was no suggestion of criminality.
It emerged last night that Thomas Cook had been forced to introduce internal rules to curb bonuses in 2012.
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