Compensation from delayed flight

Notimpressed

Hi all,

Hope you are well.

In April I had a flight booked with Cathay Pacific from Heathrow to Hong Kong.

The airline delayed the flight by 3 hours and when I contacted them to complain they wrote to me and said that I could have refund of all the monies I had spent for one nights accommodation, travel and food.

That was 5 months ago and I havent heard anything back from them, even though I have sent them the receipts and contacted them several times.

What do I do now???

Is there a regulatory body I could contact? Where can I complain? Or how long should I wait before their offer becomes invalid??

Thanks for the help

Voyager2002

Surely the payment for food and accommodation is "care" rather than "compensation", and so is not affected by the "stay"?

I must say, a night's accommodation for a 3-hour delay sounds exceptionally generous to me. Do you have the promise of reimbursement in writing?

Notimpressed

Hi,

Thank you for all your responses. Yes I have it in writing from them via email, and I just think that after all the emal I have sent (at least 6), that its just really bad customer services and complete lack of respect for their customers!

City boy would the European Laws apply to Cathay as they are a Hong Kong based company??

apt

The regulation applies to all flights leaving an EU airport. It only applies to EU airlines for flights to an EU airport from outside.


Scope
1. This Regulation shall apply:
(a) to passengers departing from an airport located in the territory of a Member State to which the Treaty applies;
(b) to passengers departing from an airport located in a third country to an airport situated in the territory of a Member State to which the Treaty applies, unless they received benefits or compensation and were given assistance in that third country, if the operating air carrier of the flight concerned is a Community carrier.

Voyager2002

So in sum, it does seem that you have a legal right to "care" during the time when you were delayed. I am just puzzled, because a three-hour delay would not normally mean that you needed a hotel and things: and be careful, because what seems like a three-hour delay but is actually two hours and fifty-nine minutes might not give you a right to anything. So before suggesting legal action, I would like to know what actually happened: eg, did a three-hour delay mean that you missed a connecting flight and so had to wait overnight somewhere on the way?

Anyway, you do have an email promising you reimbursement. The simplest way to get them to honour that promise would be to get hold of the person who sent the email and/or that person's manager. You might like to explore the airline website and/or telephone the London office at a slack time in the hope of finding a direct telephone number, and then use the tools on this site to find a cheap way to telephone Hong Kong.