Just received notification from Thomas Cook Direct following my complaint that they have now decided the Birmingham Manos/Mytravel flight is not flying and passengers are being offered Manchester flights or cancellation

Well at least I now know where I stand and will be booking a DIY to Thailand instead of Goa. If I don't like it I can always return to Goa the following year.

Possibly one of the main reasons for all this uncertainty is more to do with First Choice and Thomsons joining as one. We have noticed that FC holidays have shot up in price too. Their direct booking arm, Eclipse has also shot up. Thomsons on the other hand has some well priced holidays and we used them to The Gambia in January. As the Gambia is not considered long haul our aircraft was not particularly good, First Choice might have been better ( Olympic used them).
I'm not sure were Olympic will now fit in, but they are part of the First Choice TUI outfit. Eclipse will be folded after April 2009. The new direct arm of the group will be Portland holidays. We have just booked our Goa holiday with them and are paying less for Nov 08 than we did Feb 07 with Eclipse. The good news is that Portland use First Choice aircraft.
Thomsons won't be using Monarch because no doubt they will use FC too when they sort themselves out.
I guess one thing that might result in all this is that there will be less flight only tickets available. Package tours want to sell packages not just flights. When we priced up the flight options it was a non starter. Not only was it Monarch airways but the difference in price allowed us about £300 to find B&B for 2 at a decent hotel. Not worth the hassle and certainly not the flight by all accounts.

Just got word yesterday, that Thomas Cook have cancelled the Thursday flights from Manchester next season. The offered to fly us out on the Sunday, but this was no use as we have an apartment booked from the Friday. They offered to cancel and make a full refund or move the flight to either the Sunday or to Gatwick at no extra cost. We opted for Gatwick, but they are horrible flight times coming home.

This seems to be a bit of a trend. It appears that Monarch have pulled their Sunday night flight from gatwick; First Choice have pulled the Birmingham flight and Thomas Cook their Thursday flight from Manchester. That's 3 flights a week that we know of so far....would appear that fewer people (Brits anyway) will be going to Goa next season.