Flight delay and cancellation compensation, Thomas Cook ONLY

maghater

Yip I get the impression they are swamped. Flight stats were abysmal for last summer, meaning lots of cases, plus all the historic ones. TCs response was to cull loads of admin staff, and "reorganise". Certainly for most of last year their policy was to fob off for as long as possible, then deny for as long as possible, even in cases where they had no chance of winning. So yip the pigeons are coming home to roost in the shape of numerous court cases. Probably just dawning on them that its going to cost a lot more money to settle now than it would have done if they had played ball in the first place.

Steviek_2

If they ran the business in a proper economic and efficient manner in the first place this would not arise. I wouldnt book with them again I have had 4 holidays with them and each and every flight was delayed the worst is unfortuantely statute barred which was a 15 hour delay in Barbados in 2004

badbobby

maghater wrote: »

Yip I get the impression they are swamped. Flight stats were abysmal for last summer, meaning lots of cases, plus all the historic ones. TCs response was to cull loads of admin staff, and "reorganise". Certainly for most of last year their policy was to fob off for as long as possible, then deny for as long as possible, even in cases where they had no chance of winning. So yip the pigeons are coming home to roost in the shape of numerous court cases. Probably just dawning on them that its going to cost a lot more money to settle now than it would have done if they had played ball in the first place.

Pre hearing I did some work from the CAA figures of 2012 punctuality. This only covers flights leaving the UK, but my analysis shows:

- 0.5% of all flights were delayed by 3+ hours
- 3.1% of TC flights were delayed by 3+ hours
- 9.9% of all flights delayed by over 3+ hours were operated by TC

Clearly this is just my analysis, which may be completely wrong and hasn't been tested, so do not rely on this. Also, some of these may well have been due to weather etc, so not TC's fault.

However, my analysis shows you're 6 times (3.1/0.5) as likely to be delayed on TC vs any other flight leaving UK.

My suspicion is that TC outsource their flights to operators who don't have any slack in their fleet so when there are delays TC can't really do much.

Download the info yourself and see what you can calculate! It requires some messing about, which I can explain by PM.

sging1

Steviek wrote: »

If they ran the business in a proper economic and efficient manner in the first place this would not arise. I wouldnt book with them again I have had 4 holidays with them and each and every flight was delayed the worst is unfortuantely statute barred which was a 15 hour delay in Barbados in 2004

What was the fault on your delay in Barbados. Your right about running the business properly. I was delayed around 25 hours in 2011 from Barbados for a steering failure on the hydraulics, according to the captain and they kept us on the plane for around 5 hours with no hope of fixing it.
I have my suspicions from seeing a post on this forum that they put us on the plane due to take the passengers from our cruise the next day, as their flight was the same time we flew out after our delay and they were then delayed for 51 hours, it also seems even though our plane was broke they still sat them on it for 5 hours before taking them off again. These passengers had to eventually contact the British Embassy to get home. So instead of around 300 odd unhappy passengers they had over 600. Not the best way to manage a situation like this.

maghater

https://www.flightontime.info summer 2012 3.24% of TCs flights delayed by 3 hours or more, average flight delay 26 minutes, that's one heck of a lot of ecs

katiekins82

Call me a dim wit if you like but I am struggling to understand wether or not the reasons for my delays were due to extraordinary circumstances. Everything I have read relating to "technical issues" which was the cause of the delay on outbound flight, state things such as "denied boarding" etc. I can only gather that the technical issues they relate to are things that have caused a delay on the ground as they have been found on checks etc and flights have been delayed whilst they waited for parts for example. We were actually midair and an hour into the flight when we lost an engine and were turned back round to MAN. Would this be extrordinary circumstance or should any fault have been picked up in ground checks?
Also I can not find any info on delays due to goverments disputes delay of inbound flight) so do not know where i stand on this either. Does anyone have any ideas where I can look or who to speak to to tell me if i do have a case?

maghater

katiekins82 wrote: »

Call me a dim wit if you like but I am struggling to understand wether or not the reasons for my delays were due to extraordinary circumstances. Everything I have read relating to "technical issues" which was the cause of the delay on outbound flight, state things such as "denied boarding" etc. I can only gather that the technical issues they relate to are things that have caused a delay on the ground as they have been found on checks etc and flights have been delayed whilst they waited for parts for example. We were actually midair and an hour into the flight when we lost an engine and were turned back round to MAN. Would this be extrordinary circumstance or should any fault have been picked up in ground checks?
Also I can not find any info on delays due to goverments disputes delay of inbound flight) so do not know where i stand on this either. Does anyone have any ideas where I can look or who to speak to to tell me if i do have a case?

Certainly wouldn't call you a dim wit, the bottom line is you want compensation from TC, and they don't want to pay you it. Very little is black and white, which explains the number of posts on this forum. You might notice that Thomas Cook has considerably more posts than say British Airways, and as BA has ten times as many planes as TC you can surmise that either TC are very unlucky or as I do are a right shower, and will go to great lengths to avoid shelling out. Technical issues can cover anything from a loose bolt on a toilet door to a wing dropping off. If you read the final 3 paragraphs of the Wallentin judgement (see FAQS), you will see that Tech issues are not normally regarded as ecs. However the fact that it happened in mid flight might cause a problem. Government disputes are not specifically mentioned as ecs, unless TC could link them to strikes or political instability, in which case you would be snookered. Start the process by following the procedure in FAQs. I also wouldn't write off NWNF lawyers, better 70% of the pot than nothing

badbobby

maghater wrote: »

www.flightontime.info summer 2012 3.24% of TCs flights delayed by 3 hours or more, average flight delay 26 minutes, that's one heck of a lot of ecs

Looks like my calcs aren't too far off then!!

maghater

I've got an email from their customer services saying that just a small percentage of their flights are delayed beyond 15 minutes

badbobby

IIRC, they only seem to have problems with "really" delayed flights. It seems that other airlines can prevent it getting stupid (i.e. over 3hrs) but they cannot.