Flight delay and cancellation compensation, Tui/Thomson ONLY

legal_magpie

I have now commenced Court proceedings on behalf of my wife and myself against Thomson concerning our flight which was cancelled or delayed (we never established which) for 20 hours. Thomson have rejected the claim on the extraordinary circumstances (a fuel leak on a a flight two before ours) even though the form we were given at the time said that the cause was that the crew were out of hours.

I previously posted our case in the general forum when the cases were all stayed.

As well as the claim under the Regs I have included a claim for an extra £500 for general distress and inconvenience as the arangements at the hotel were shambolic and we hardly slept. I also had to go back to work without a day off beforehand.

I will keep you posted.
JJ

20legend

Hi I received a 2nd rejection letter on Friday from TUI advising that by law they are only going back 2 years and that they will not be continuing with my claim. Is this correct? I have sent the first 2 letters and received 2 letters saying its a 2 year period. What can I do now?

sorry if this has been answered elsewhere.

Vauban

20legend wrote: »

Hi I received a 2nd rejection letter on Friday from TUI advising that by law they are only going back 2 years and that they will not be continuing with my claim. Is this correct? I have sent the first 2 letters and received 2 letters saying its a 2 year period. What can I do now?

sorry if this has been answered elsewhere.

This is going to sound mean, but you clearly can't have read any of the threads on this forum if you are asking this question. It's been answered dozens and dozens of times.

If you don't put in even that small amount of effort, your claim is going to go nowhere.

romanby1

20legend wrote: »

Hi I received a 2nd rejection letter on Friday from TUI advising that by law they are only going back 2 years and that they will not be continuing with my claim. Is this correct? I have sent the first 2 letters and received 2 letters saying its a 2 year period. What can I do now?

sorry if this has been answered elsewhere.

Reply quoting the Section 9 of the Limitation Act 1980. the time is 6 years from the date of flight delay.

AlwaysConfused

OK, I know I’ve asked before but I just want to be sure before I make a fool of myself. This is the response I got from Thomson, do I have a case or was it just bad luck?

Again, thanks for all your help

From Thomson…
“During a routine wheel change on one of our aircraft, the axle nut was found damaged. There were subsequent delays and errors in the correct supplier part being delivered, which were outside of our control. This had a reactionary effect on our flight programme at the time, resulting in the delay to your flight.

In case of your flight, the cause of the delay was in reaction to a delay to another aircraft caused by an 'unexpected flight safety shortcoming' arising from the discovery of a technical defect or failure of a part.

Maintenance of the Thomson fleet of aircraft is conducted to some of the highest standards in the world. It's another area that we take extremely seriously as it affects safety, cost and on-time performance. Our approach is to have a regime that results in a schedule of assessment, service and part replacement which is significantly better than the manufacturer's recommendations.

As with any part in a complex machine, aircraft parts have a certain life expectancy, and during this life expectancy, the part is most likely to experience problems when it is first installed and when it is nearing the end of its life. Unfortunately, in this case, a part which was not expected to fail was found to have failed during routine maintenance.

It is clear that failure of a part outside of its life expectancy is not inherent in the operation of an air carrier and is actually quite unusual.

As a result of this part failure, repairs had to be made to an aircraft before it could leave the hangar, and this resulted in reactionary delay to your flight.

As these circumstances were entirely unexpected and outside of our control, there is no entitlement for compensation for the delay.”

Vauban

AlwaysConfused wrote: »

OK, I know I’ve asked before but I just want to be sure before I make a fool of myself. This is the response I got from Thomson, do I have a case or was it just bad luck?

Again, thanks for all your help

From Thomson…

So reading this correctly, the technical failure doesn't even appear to be on your own flight - but some distance back. Only you can make the decision about whether you think you have a case or not: I am not a lawyer. But read the Wallentin judgement, and decide how you think this applies to your own case. In particular, read paras 23-25, which I have reproduced below:

"23. Although the Community legislature included in that list ‘unexpected flight safety shortcomings’ and although a technical problem in an aircraft may be amongst such shortcomings, the fact remains that the circumstances surrounding such an event can be characterised as ‘extraordinary’ within the meaning of Article 5(3) of Regulation No 261/2004 only if they relate to an event which, like those listed in recital 14 in the preamble to that regulation, is not inherent in the normal exercise of the activity of the air carrier concerned and is beyond the actual control of that carrier on account of its nature or origin.

"24. In the light of the specific conditions in which carriage by air takes place and the degree of technological sophistication of aircraft, it must be stated that air carriers are confronted as a matter of course in the exercise of their activity with various technical problems to which the operation of those aircraft inevitably gives rise. It is moreover in order to avoid such problems and to take precautions against incidents compromising flight safety that those aircraft are subject to regular checks which are particularly strict, and which are part and parcel of the standard operating conditions of air transport undertakings. The resolution of a technical problem caused by failure to maintain an aircraft must therefore be regarded as inherent in the normal exercise of an air carrier’s activity.

"25 Consequently, technical problems which come to light during maintenance of aircraft or on account of failure to carry out such maintenance cannot constitute, in themselves, ‘extraordinary circumstances’ under Article 5(3) of Regulation No 261/2004."

emmawendy221

Can anyone please advise.....

Flight TOM1568 on 29th July 2011 from Belfast International to Tenerife with the scheduled departure time of 3:55pm. The flight actually departed at 10:28pm having said 6h33min delay.

So i sent the original template letter in October 2012 registered post.
I had to chase this up several times before they sent me a Thompson or Thomas Cook complaint form and asking for boarding passes ect.
I sent them everything they asked for.
They have came back to me sayin..


We've looked in detail at the circumstances that surround your experience. So let's look at the specific cause of your delay.

We can see from our internal flight reports that your outbound flight was originally operated by a Sunwing aircraft.. As part of the EU Regulation we have to look at the root cause of the delay to establish if compensation is due and in the case of your flight, we are unable to do this as the responsibility of the aircraft is with Sunwing. Therefore unfortunately we are unable to offer you any compensation and this is something you would need to pursue through Sunwing.

This is not true as i have pictures of the Big blue Thompson aircraft..
we did however have a Sunwing aircraft with Canadian pilot and crew coming home --- Not the flight that was delayed....
I have all pictures to back my claim up...

They are ignoring me now since i told them this

They have told me to contact Sunwing who are Canadian and outside of the eu regulations?????

Mark2spark

emmawendy221 wrote: »

Can anyone please advise.....

Flight TOM1568 on 29th July 2011 from Belfast International to Tenerife with the scheduled departure time of 3:55pm. The flight actually departed at 10:28pm having said 6h33min delay.

So i sent the original template letter in October 2012 registered post.
I had to chase this up several times before they sent me a Thompson or Thomas Cook complaint form and asking for boarding passes ect.
I sent them everything they asked for.
They have came back to me sayin..


We've looked in detail at the circumstances that surround your experience. So let's look at the specific cause of your delay.

We can see from our internal flight reports that your outbound flight was originally operated by a Sunwing aircraft.. As part of the EU Regulation we have to look at the root cause of the delay to establish if compensation is due and in the case of your flight, we are unable to do this as the responsibility of the aircraft is with Sunwing. Therefore unfortunately we are unable to offer you any compensation and this is something you would need to pursue through Sunwing.

This is not true as i have pictures of the Big blue Thompson aircraft..
we did however have a Sunwing aircraft with Canadian pilot and crew coming home --- Not the flight that was delayed....
I have all pictures to back my claim up...

They are ignoring me now since i told them this

They have told me to contact Sunwing who are Canadian and outside of the eu regulations?????

I'm going to say it one more time, to all posters.

DON'T PLAY THEIR GAMES

Write once and commence your claim.
After 14 days (or so) write back with NBA
14 days after that commence a court claim.

Emma, you can write back as part of your NBA informing them that they have got it wrong if you like, but don't let them say oh ok we'll get back to you within 56 days or some nonsense.

poplar

Has anyone been successful with their flight delay compensation from Thomson? ...I sent a claims form 32 days ago recorded next day delivery,and still had no correspondence is this the norm ?

Ratrall

I filed 2 letters for compensation on the 31/03/13, one on behalf of my mother in law for delayed flights to Cuba 26/12/12
There was 6 in my party and 3 in my mother in laws party.
My mother in law received a cheque today for £1560 so I now await mine!! (£3048) just a matter of time I hope..!