Flight delay and cancellation compensation, Thomas Cook ONLY

JPears

:j:beer::j Congrats. Bet that NWNF company are kicking themselves!

Oliver_Klozoff_2

steve1500 wrote: »

TC have acknowledged at MCOL & are going to defend, which I expexted at theis early stage.

Apart from starting to learn the various rulings backwards.

I have also been onto TC's website if there is anything there that may also help http://www.thomascook.com/thomas-cook-history/

They appear to have virtually no room to manoeuvre should anything go wrong.

"Thomas Cook Airlines operates a fleet of 35 aircraft from 21 regional airports to destinations worldwide"

Presumably there will be at least one plane on the ground for servicing???

Ugh. Typed a reply, hit a button, lost reply, no energy to retype.

Ask questions showing they don't have suitable contigency plan in place. Crew on standby? Aircraft? Wet leasing? etc.

Hint: budget airlines often hire staff as contractors not full time employees.

JPears

Oliver_Klozoff wrote: »

Ugh. Typed a reply, hit a button, lost reply, no energy to retype.

Ask questions showing they don't have suitable contigency plan in place. Crew on standby? Aircraft? Wet leasing? etc.

Hint: budget airlines often hire staff as contractors not full time employees.

eg I understand that Ryanair pilots are on a zero hours contract - means they don't have a salary, they only get paid when they fly. This means that Ryanair probably have them by the short and curlies to do unsocial hours etc and probably have little capacity for short notice jobs.

Migwell030744

Hi, my Wife and our Daughter with her 15 month old son and myself were on holiday in the Algarve in 2008 and flew into Faro for a week with My Travel, starting on 11/09/2008. On the Tuesday 16/09/2008 only by luck did we go to reception and were we given a note which had been left at the reception desk saying that our departure was going to be delayed on the 18th, and as a result we would not be collected from the hotel until the evening of 18/09/2008. About 18:00 I seem to remember instead of about 08:00 so we had to remain in the resort and pay for extra meals etc. For this we did get a cheque of £40 per full fair paying passenger, of whom there were three.

Our original return into Newcastle was supposed to be 14:55 18/09/2008 and in the end we landed into Newcastle 00:45 19/09/2008. The flight was supposed to have been by Thomas cook who we had been booked with and have flown out with, but our return ended up being on a Jet2 plane. The reason given at the time was that Thomas cook had used our aircraft to help with the return of holiday makers who had been stranded by the Excel collapse and had then chartered another aircraft to take us home but not at the first published time.

I have since then, tried without success to find the flight that Thomas Cook were to have provided on the Flights Stats site No. TCX927L, which seems to have been deleted all together. However the flight provided by Jet2 which was LS6254 Scheduled to arrive at Newcastle at 00:30 arrived only 15 minutes late at 00:45 on the19/09/2008. This gave us a total delay of 9 Hours 50 Minute.

I have written to Thomas Cook regarding this delay but as yet had no reply, which is to be expected, as it was only on the 29/08/2013 that I sent the letter including acopy of our booking confirmation.

I was wondering if the members of this forum think I stand a chance of the euro compensation with this claim as per 261/2004. I am however just expecting the usual fob off letter to start with.

I am also wondering if a 15 month old person is able to be included in the calculation for the compensation.

P.S. I havejust found this on this section of the forum under post Number 1444 which seems to be just about the same thing.

["I'm sorry to inform you of a late change to yourflight today. Due to disruption within the Thomas Cook fleet, theaircraft scheduled to operate your flight is no longer available. Ouroperations department has therefore sourced an alternative carrier and you willnow be travelling on a Boeing 757 operated by Jet2."

How would I know the difference?
All passengers due on the TC flight got on the Jet2 plane I don't think it wasa scheduled flight as it was a "free for all" on the plane, we werejust told to sit anywhere, there was no trolley service on the flight, norefreshments nothing and all very rushed.]

ThanksMigwell

greigster

I have instructed a solicitor via my house insurance, and court papers have been served. Thomas Cook`s solicitors have said they will defend.
There defence is that, our arrival delay of over 4 hours on a flight to Goa last December, was caused by an administration error on the part of the Mexican authorities at Cancun airport, which is where the plane was coming from to take us to Goa.
Having spent the whole weekend on Google, I have found a couple of links that suggest the plane was grounded/held by the Mexican authorities due to "non payment" of airport charges at Cancun.
Due to a Mexican holiday on 1st, 2nd and 3rd of December 2012, the plane was held by the Mexican authorities for 2 days until the Cancun admin office re-opened. The plane and its registration No. has been quoted in their defence and after checking Flightstats, it actually shows as arriving back in Manchester in the early hours of 4th December, several hours before our scheduled departure from Gatwick to Goa.
We eventually left Gatwick over 4 hours late on an aircraft that had come from Caya Coco in Cuba. This plane was over 4 hours late going out from Gawick to Cuba and subsequently over 4 hours late coming back from Cuba to Gatwick for our flight to Goa.

My question is how can I find proof of the aircraft being held by Mexican authorities and the reasons.

Thanks for any advice.

steve1500

greigster wrote: »

I have instructed a solicitor via my house insurance, and court papers have been served. Thomas Cook`s solicitors have said they will defend.
There defence is that, our arrival delay of over 4 hours on a flight to Goa last December, was caused by an administration error on the part of the Mexican authorities at Cancun airport, which is where the plane was coming from to take us to Goa.
Having spent the whole weekend on Google, I have found a couple of links that suggest the plane was grounded/held by the Mexican authorities due to "non payment" of airport charges at Cancun.
Due to a Mexican holiday on 1st, 2nd and 3rd of December 2012, the plane was held by the Mexican authorities for 2 days until the Cancun admin office re-opened. The plane and its registration No. has been quoted in their defence and after checking Flightstats, it actually shows as arriving back in Manchester in the early hours of 4th December, several hours before our scheduled departure from Gatwick to Goa.
We eventually left Gatwick over 4 hours late on an aircraft that had come from Caya Coco in Cuba. This plane was over 4 hours late going out from Gawick to Cuba and subsequently over 4 hours late coming back from Cuba to Gatwick for our flight to Goa.

My question is how can I find proof of the aircraft being held by Mexican authorities and the reasons.

Thanks for any advice.

Presumably if you have employed a Solicitor they should be doing all of this for you?

x-spendthrift

Apologies, it has been so long since I have used the forum! I am about to put in a claim with thomascookfly.com for a delayed flight of 22 hours back in Oct 2009 due to technical problems. I have looked at some threads and read some FAQ's, however I am still unsure of a couple of things:
1) Do I just email thomas cook or do I have to write a template letter?
2) if I write a letter which address do I use to send it to bearing in mind I booked the flights direct with thomascookfly.com as I can see from previous threads that people have been using different correspondence addresses?

3) Regarding proof of the booking I have the email itinerary with booking references and also proof of receipts, however, I don't have boarding passes anymore (as this was in 2009) does anyone know whether I would have to request a "subject to access" or whether I have enough proof without having to obtain this? Any information will be greatly appreciated.

greigster

steve1500 wrote: »

Presumably if you have employed a Solicitor they should be doing all of this for you?

You would have thought so wouldn't you.
I seem to be doing all the work and getting all the data from the likes of Flightdata etc. But I suppose I seem to be getting a "cut price service" presumably because its just an add on to my house insurance as opposed to a full price service if I was paying £280 per hour.

fossman

Oliver_Klozoff wrote: »

The problem with that is that they can (and often do) swap out aircrafts as needed. It's not set in stone. Not a solid argument. My flight is usually flown by one of two aircrafts though sometimes it was flown with a larger one or an alternate one.

I know they often swap aircrafts about but the fact is the plane that was scheduled to arrive from Zante at 9.30am could not have been originally assigned to the Menorca flight that was scheduled to depart at 7am.

As someone has already posted the swiching of aircrafts to cover other delays is an opperation decision and not an extraordinary circumstance.

Oliver_Klozoff_2

fossman wrote: »

I know they often swap aircrafts about but the fact is the plane that was scheduled to arrive from Zante at 9.30am could not have been originally assigned to the Menorca flight that was scheduled to depart at 7am.

As someone has already posted the swiching of aircrafts to cover other delays is an opperation decision and not an extraordinary circumstance.

By all means, go ahead and tgry it. I am not a laywer or an areonautical engineer or a Thomas Cook employee. So what do you expect to hear from us aside from what we know peppered with lots of opinion? My opinion is that that isn't a solid argument. Go ahead and try it. Only if I were you instead of coming out and saying thias happened bc xyz, ask questions to get the answers you want.

Accustions without solid evidence don't sit well. Ask questions to lead them to admit your suspicions. Where does the plane before my flight come from? Is this the usual route? In the event that things do not go to plan, then what?