Inghams have changed our flights due to the Zoom collapse - compensation?

broudie

Hi - 1st post, hoping someone out there can provide some advice..

Myself and 7 others have a winter holiday booked to Banff next March, with Inghams. We specifically booked to go from Manchester, as between us we're located in the midlands and Yorkshire. Inghams charters to Canada are usually supplied by Monarch, we received an email a few weeks ago telling us that the charter had been 'sub-let' (as it were) by Monarch to Zoom. Two days later Zoom went bust.

So we had more correspondence from Inghams saying they would sort something out - but at the time they obviously had more immediate things to sort out with other passengers.

Since then they came back to us with some options:

1. Keep exactly the same holiday but with flights from Gatwick (subject to availability)
2. Switch to a European holiday with a £40pp discount (although I think we got a bigger discount than that for booking our Canada holiday early)
3. Switch to a different 7 or 14 night holiday to Canada from Manchester (Wed to Wed), subject to possible additional costs
4. Find our own flights and rebook on an accommodation only basis.
5. Cancel the holiday and receive a full refund.

The only realistic option available to us was to have to take the Gatwick flights. We've been to Europe several times over the last few years (and frankly the discount offered was laughable), and have all wanted to go to Canada together for a long time. Peoples' holiday allowances meant they couldn't switch to a longer holiday, and it's too far to go to cut the time down. When we called up they said there was only 10 spaces left on the Gatwick flight, so felt obliged to book on to that one.

On the phone they said there was 'nothing else they could do or offer' by way of recompense for the additional costs we will now have to incur. We chose Manchester specifically because of the ease of access for us all, but Gatwick is possibly the worst airport for us all to get to. We will have to more than double our travel costs (driving is the only realistic option at the moment as we'll all have a case and our winter sports equipment), and due to the timings of the flights - getting a hotel near gatwick looks likely too. Yet more costs.

There is one other option - for Inghams to fly us down and back from Manchester with BA - who do run flights at good times for our holiday.

My questions to people out there are, do we have a case for trying to recover some of these costs from Inghams? and if so, do you have advice on the best way of doing things?

THANKS!

richardw

If you do a search on https://www.charterflight.co.uk are there any other alternatives from MAN or any other airport north of Gatwick?

Quentin

You could take option 5 and start again.

They have no obligation to compensate you.

broudie

Quentin wrote: »

You could take option 5 and start again.

They have no obligation to compensate you.

That's true - but we specifically booked our holiday months ago in order to take advantage of early bird discounts being offered. If we took our money back and started again we'd now have to pay between £100 and £200 more each.

What I didn't mention (and should have) was that Inghams have double booked the specific aircraft which should have been taking us to Canada from Manchester, and now say there aren't enough planes around to replace that one.

I appreciate they aren't under any legal obligation - but wondered if there are any other cases out there where people have gotten some recompense for their extra expenses.

Jazzy_B

Canadian Affair fly from Manchester to Calgary and their prices are usually very good