Missed flight due to time change - whose fault?

kazwookie

I always thought you needed 3 hours before take off time to be at the airport.

You turned up at the airport at 11 for a 13.10 flight, that was tight timing anyway IMO.

If you had turned up 3 hours early you would of caught you flight even with the time change.

The same nearly happened to me our tickets said 11.25am flight, turned up at airport 9am, ticket desk no people queing , no cases, most odd I think to my self, the board is showing the flight time as 10.25am, we had 20mins till the gate closed, (9.20am) the front desk staff were very quick, raced through immigration etc, and down to the gate (the furthest away from the entrance to 'air side') and had 15 mins to spare.
That taught me a lesson, be on time!

I hope you get something sorted out.

Oldernotwiser

Rikki wrote: »

If our clocks go back here by 1 hour GM time doesn't that mean a country that is 1 hour ahead becomes two hours ahead.

No you're completely right. If the flight was due to leave at 12.10 and the clocks went back an hour, the flight should have been, and was, an hour earlier. I can't see why the OP thought that the flight would be an hour later.

Rikki

Oldernotwiser wrote: »

No you're completely right. If the flight was due to leave at 12.10 and the clocks went back an hour, the flight should have been, and was, an hour earlier. I can't see why the OP thought that the flight would be an hour later.

Phew, I thought it was just me who saw it like that.

splishsplash

Oldernotwiser wrote: »

No you're completely right. If the flight was due to leave at 12.10 and the clocks went back an hour, the flight should have been, and was, an hour earlier. I can't see why the OP thought that the flight would be an hour later.

That was my take on it too, though the OP said there was a change in the scheduled time of the flight because DST ended...
I always get confused by DST and whether we lose or gain an hour (have ended up two hours early for things on more than one occasion:o ).
If the flight was changed to account for DST in Morocco ending, then it should have been put forward an hour (i.e. to GMT+1h), leaving arrival time in the UK unchanged.
It sounds like the change in scheduled take-off time meant the flight landed two hours earlier in the UK, which doesn't make sense if DST was responsible for the change in the schedule .

M4RKM

11am 12noon 1pm
-1 0 +1

so, it was at noon, the clocks went back, the flight time hasn't shifted, so it'll be 11am.. i'm confused to how you can get this wrong..

this is one reason why turning up at the airport early enough is good!

M

dmg24

I am not aware that email as a valid means of notifying a change has been tested, but my feeling is that it would be (particularly if the booking had been made at distance). It is not a foolproof method, but then what is?

Unless notified to do otherwise, you should have checked the time of the flight with your agent. Even ignoring the legalities of the issue, this would make sense as both parties would be communicating in their first language (assuming you are not French or Arabic).

Could I ask how you ended up in Marrakech? Were you advised to go there?

ceejayblue

Sorry to add to any confusion here but I can't see what the problem was with the timings? If the flight was at 12.10pm and the clocks went back (like ours do) at 1-2am, then as long as you had put your watch back an hour (before you went to bed) the flight would still have been at 12.10pm? The only difference would've been the time you got back to the UK (if our times hadn't changed). For example, when we put the clocks back in October I change mine before I go to bed but leave my alarm set for 7am as whether the clocks go forward or back I have to get up then for work. I don't adjust the alarm to get up at 6am. All it means is that I've gained an hours sleep.

Even if the flight had been moved to 11.10am instead of 12.10pm if you had been there at 10.10am (ie 2 hours before) you would've been in time to catch the flight. Like others have said I would always make sure I got to an airport at least 3 hours before a flight because you never know if there might be a problem with travelling to the airport, let alone problems when you get there.

x3ja

Oldernotwiser wrote: »

No you're completely right. If the flight was due to leave at 12.10 and the clocks went back an hour, the flight should have been, and was, an hour earlier. I can't see why the OP thought that the flight would be an hour later.

Not that I think this is the real issue here, but let me try once more to explain my faulty logic.

If I go to bed at midnight and need to wake up at 7am. On a normal night these are 7 hours apart (obvious eh?). However when the clocks go back, the time between midnight and 7am is 8 hours, not 7 (repeated 1am-2am). I assumed that because in this situation you get 1 hour extra in bed in this situation, then a flight that was advertised at 12.10pm would then be at 1.10pm. I now see that logic is flawed. (That only happens if the event moves with the clock change, and even then it will happen at that advertised time.)

As I've said, the real issue is this: the flight did not leave at the time advertised on the tickets and STA failed to inform us of that change.

Admittedly, as noted by another poster, if we'd arrived 3 hours before the flight, we may have been allowed on. Following this experience, we will of course be a lot more careful in the future. However advice on how early to turn up at the airport and showing how flawed my logic was is not really what I'm after - my wife has done plenty of that already!

x3ja

ceejayblue wrote: »

Even if the flight had been moved to 11.10am instead of 12.10pm if you had been there at 10.10am (ie 2 hours before) you would've been in time to catch the flight. Like others have said I would always make sure I got to an airport at least 3 hours before a flight because you never know if there might be a problem with travelling to the airport, let alone problems when you get there.

Yes, this is all true. I guess your advice then is: smarten up and don't make this mistake again - you don't deserve any compensation.

x3ja

dmg24 wrote: »

Could I ask how you ended up in Marrakech? Were you advised to go there?

I'm not sure what you mean. We went to Morocco and spent a few days in Marrakech at the beginning and end of the holiday - that's where we flew to & from. We also went to the desert and the beach. The reason we went to 2 different RAM offices was because when we checked the flight times, we were in Agadir (beach) and then when we missed the flight, we were in Marrakech.
Does that answer your question, or were you getting at something else?