Monarch delays & Compensations. Listed flights denied in O.P.

charlie_chica81

Hi,

We are getting married in Gibraltar in August and have booked flights withMonarch for the 8 of us to fly out there for a week.

As we live in Cornwall and are flying from Birmingham at 7am (flights to Gibraltar are few and far between) we had the night before the flight booked inat the Ibis hotel and parking for three cars for the week. All of this we careunable to cancel.

I received an email last week from Monarch saying they have changed the outbound flight from Birmingham to Gibraltar, dramatically! We were supposed to take off at 7am landing at 11:15am but they have now change the flight to take off at 3pm landing at 7pm.!!! Now I don’t know what you think but that’s a hell of a difference. It means we've lost a day’s holiday, bearing in mind we are only there a week, that’s a lot not to mention the fact that it is our ‘Wedding week’!!!

So, I contacted them to see if they could compensate me for the loss of the hotel booking and the fact that I am losing a day of my holiday…. They offered us all extra leg room on the flight!!! Not sure how that helps but….. Any how I have now cancelled the flights with them and received a full refund so I can pick an alternative route, lovely. But I’ve had to cancel the hotel/parking and have lost £250!

Is there any way I can claim compensation from Monarch for this? Do you have any rights where this is concerned? We have saved long and hard to do and it’s all costing enough as it is without this unnecessary expense.

Any guidance on this would be so helpful, I am really upset about it.

Thank you

Charlotte x

JPears

In short, no, unless you booked the hotel thru Monarch. Its dispicable behaviour by all airlines. BA did the same to me last year, 3 times on the same flight, eventally changing both outbound and inbound flights by several days. They just didn't give a !!!!, even going so far as to say it was my fault for bookng so early! No BA it was your fault for permenantly cancelling 2 of the 4 daily flights you so heavily promoted 6 months earlier.
Maybe your insurance covers it?

peachyprice

Seems like you've cut of your nose to spite your face there.

There's no reason why you had to cancel everything, you could have just stayed in the hotel the night before as planned, you'd still need to be at the airport by 1pm, so you could have had an easy morning in the hotel.

Now that you've cancelled Monarch are not obliged to offer you anything at all, not that they ever were, 8 hours isn't considered a significant change and as you were advised so far in advance you were never entitled to any compensation. You'd have been better off taking their extra leg room offer and keeping the flights.

Your insurance won't cover you as you chose to cancel.

margy

hi i sent off my claim form last August and not had so much as an acknowledgement of receiving my claim any ideas what i should be doing or is this normal what they do
many thanks in advance

diggerb

Monarch delays. A sorry tale of a sorry company !!

In 2012 i booked four tickets with Monarch to fly to Cyprus. My wife and i to travel on the 11th of July, our two daughters on the same flight a week later. The flight on the 11th was delayed by nearly five hrs the second flight a week later was also delayed by over 4hrs. On both occasions the SAME lame bunch of explanations were rolled out over the period, we were in contact with our daughters via text message so we would know their arrival time and got to a stage were we telling them what time the next message would be and what it would say, laughable!!

On our return i did some research and found that this particular flight had long delays on three weeks out of a seven week period and that only on one occasion had it departed close to schedule ! This is the sort of lack of performance that the e.u legislation is designed to prevent, so i contacted Monarch , who denied any responsibility passed the complaint from department to department stalled any way they could
and generally tried to fob me off. After many letters calls and e.mails i eventually got a Monarch claim form(one for each person of course)!!
That process was a waste of time so we moved on to the small claims court. Monarch defended the claim the defence being "extraordinary circumstances" events beyond their control."
When the Monarch defence bundle arrived it was like a small encyclopedia part of which was a copy of the airbus service manual !! complete with a signed statement from the maintenance engineer giving a full account of the initial problem and the steps taken to rectify it.
Now to receive all this information is a daunting experience for a layman not in the aircraft industry and it made me reconsider my options. I then got to thinking why so much info ? So i decided to wade through it, among all the padding was the Monarch event printout,which is chronological list of the problem and the engineers actions to correct it.
To save time here is a condensed list of these events !
10/07/12. on return flight from Tenerife landing gear slow to retract.In Manchester monarch engineers elect to position plane in hangar to jack plane and test landing gear retraction times.
10/07/12. 23.00.aircraft in hangar after delays with other aircraft movements and problems with jacks.
11/07/12 04.34 six hours wasted trying to get correct jacks in serviceable condition to jack aircraft !!! finally ready at 05.30.
11/07/12 06.40 team on way to commence retraction test.
11/07/12 08.41 operational test completed 20 cycles no fault shown.
various problems with brake fluid leaks discovered etc etc.
11/07/12 13.00 aircraft serviceable.
11/07/12 13.25 aircraft on to departure stand.
11/07/12 16.05 aircraft departs 6.5 hrs late. scheduled time 09.40 hrs.

Synopsis of the whole affair is.
On the prior flight a warning light said landing gear slow to retract monarch were aware of this around midnight 10/07.
The plane needs jacking and 20 cycles of retraction are needed as a test.
The airbus manual quotes, main gear extension cycle 15 seconds, main gear retraction cycle 20 seconds total time 35 seconds for 20 sequences say 20 minutes all done and no fault found!!
IT TOOK MONARCH 13.5 HOURS INCLUDING "6.5 HOURS WASTED TRYING TO GET CORRECT JACKS IN SERVICEABLE CONDITION TO JACK AIRCRAFT"

Shocking !!
And they defended that debacle with the excuse extraordinary circumstances, TWICE !!!

David_e

margy wrote: »

hi i sent off my claim form last August and not had so much as an acknowledgement of receiving my claim any ideas what i should be doing or is this normal what they do
many thanks in advance

Their response (especially after such a long time) is unlikely to be positive so read the FAQs and either start legal action yourself or speak to a no win no fee firm.

Vauban

diggerb wrote: »

Monarch delays. A sorry tale of a sorry company !!

... IT TOOK MONARCH 13.5 HOURS INCLUDING "6.5 HOURS WASTED TRYING TO GET CORRECT JACKS IN SERVICEABLE CONDITION TO JACK AIRCRAFT"

Shocking !! And they defended that debacle with the excuse extraordinary circumstances, TWICE !!!

I know. It's astonishing isn't it? It was a similar story with my own case - though I had to ask them in court for a copy of the event print out, as they didn't include it in their bundle (hat tip from 111KAB - one the pioneers of taking to Monarch to court - was always to ask for this, as it often doesn't bear our the fictitious version of events that you might have been given previously).

I'd be genuinely embarrassed to work for Monarch in these circumstances - have they no self-respect at all?

Vauban

margy wrote: »

hi i sent off my claim form last August and not had so much as an acknowledgement of receiving my claim any ideas what i should be doing or is this normal what they do
many thanks in advance

Have you done anything since August to chase this up, margy? Either they didn't receive you forms, or they've concluded you can be safely ignored. You might want to chase them up.

As David says separately, however, I wouldn't hold your breath for a payout. So time to do some heavy reading - or instruct a reputable NWNF company (the Facebook site Monarch Complaints can sometimes recommend a good one.)

FrequentFlier

Monarch ZB 284, LGW to TFS, 19/09/11.

Claim initially rejected by Monarch: "Extraordinary Circumstances"!

Submitted online claim to CAA.
Received compensation cheques from Monarch 3 weeks later, before we had even received the email in which CAA confirmed that they had instructed Monarch to pay.
Excellent service, why spend time going through the courts?

I imagine that claims on the return flight (ZB 285) would succeed for the same reason.
Would be interested to hear if anyone else had success on these flights.

diggerb

I have to say you are in a very small minority,monarch are usually the most awkward and pedantic of organisations,i can only think that your file must have dropped on the right persons desk on the right day when they were in a particularly good mood, but congratulations anyway somebody has to be lucky, you enjoy it !