Flight delay and cancellation compensation, Tui/Thomson ONLY

Meerkat1968

Hi everyone, brief outline.

Flew with Thomson from Manchester to Florida summer 2005 and was delayed for 5 hrs, wrote letter of complaint/claim with all the info they required and have [after 2 months] just this morning received a rejection letter, with the jist of it being the following, this is word for word the most relevent part of their refusal:

"In a limited number of circumstances Regulation 261/2004 of the European Union ["the regulation"] now entitles some affected customers to a payment when their flight is delayed over 3 hours on arrival".

"The European Court Of Justice has confirmed that, as the regulation doesn't say how long passengers have to bring their claims, we need to look at our national law. The Supreme Court in the UK has said that all claims to do with "International Carriage By Air", are subject to the framework of the Montreal Convention which provides that claims need to be brought within 2 years. We, therefore, can't consider claims for flights that were delayed more than 2 years ago".

"Keeping an eye on the purpose and spirit of the regulation and doing that while continuing to deliver real value to our customers is a challenge that can only be met by applying the law robustly and not making payments where there is no entitlement. If we didn't apply the rules this way, prices would need to rise for you and all other customers".

Would i be right in assuming that Thomson with this explaination are attempting to fob me off?, or are they indeed correct with their Montreal Convention/2 year max claim on international flights claim?.

If anybody has any advise on how to proceed, be it via a claim through the courts or another letter/phone call explaining that I know they are trying to fob me off, i would be extremeley grateful.

Thanks in advance for any advice.

Meerkat1968

Mark2spark

Meerkat1968 wrote: »

Hi everyone, brief outline.

Flew with Thomson from Manchester to Florida summer 2005 and was delayed for 5 hrs, wrote letter of complaint/claim with all the info they required and have [after 2 months] just this morning received a rejection letter, with the jist of it being the following, this is word for word the most relevent part of their refusal:

"In a limited number of circumstances Regulation 261/2004 of the European Union ["the regulation"] now entitles some affected customers to a payment when their flight is delayed over 3 hours on arrival".

"The European Court Of Justice has confirmed that, as the regulation doesn't say how long passengers have to bring their claims, we need to look at our national law. The Supreme Court in the UK has said that all claims to do with "International Carriage By Air", are subject to the framework of the Montreal Convention which provides that claims need to be brought within 2 years. We, therefore, can't consider claims for flights that were delayed more than 2 years ago".

"Keeping an eye on the purpose and spirit of the regulation and doing that while continuing to deliver real value to our customers is a challenge that can only be met by applying the law robustly and not making payments where there is no entitlement. If we didn't apply the rules this way, prices would need to rise for you and all other customers".

Would i be right in assuming that Thomson with this explaination are attempting to fob me off?, or are they indeed correct with their Montreal Convention/2 year max claim on international flights claim?.

If anybody has any advise on how to proceed, be it via a claim through the courts or another letter/phone call explaining that I know they are trying to fob me off, i would be extremeley grateful.

Thanks in advance for any advice.

Meerkat1968

What a shame that you didn't take a few moments to read the FAQ's
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showpost.php?p=58530911&postcount=2
before committing to spending time writing that lot out :undecided

matt2baker

greatdaneboy wrote: »

Delayed 8.5 hrs on a Thompson flight to Heraklion April 2010. They wrote to us later saying the delay was due to the fact that our plane had to have a windscreen replaced which had to be sent for and driven to the airport!
Wrote to Thompson 17th Feb seeking compensation. Never heard back from them. Wrote again 2nd April and they replied 15th April saying they would deal with soonest. Wrote again 17th June and they called me today to advise they were only considering claims less than 2 yrs old and that they had taken expert legal advice on this, quoted a number of European directives, and are confident they are right on this. Asked for it in writing and am awaiting the letter.

I too had a phone call Friday from a lovely lady who was so OTT with how ever ever ever so sorry she was for me and my family for the delay we had 3 years ago - and what a pity it was too late to make a claim as the Montreal Convention allows only 2 years. Was she reading from an on-screen script? She certainly wasn't at that Swansea Call-Centre on the tv programme!!

I nearly cried........ with laughter. I requested she put it all in a letter, which would be a first, as I've had nothing in writing from them so far, not even an acknowledgement! When I asked about my other claim (under 2 years ago) she said it was still being looked at....(is that a Thomson euphemism for 'we need to find an appropriate excuse')? :rotfl:

Will the letter arrive? Who cares, I'm away v soon and if it's not here on my return, the 14 day NBA goes in :j

matt2baker

Having played catch-up on here to see the latest situation with the latest round of Thomson re-buffs and Thomson Tactics, it seems that the two claims I am involved with are amongst the top delay destinations.

Cancun seems almost a clear winner, and Cape Verde comes fairly high up the list too. My delays were from Birmingham to Cape Verde, and from Manchester to Cancun. The amount of posts with these as delay claims seems "an extraordinary circumstance"

My son flew from Cancun back to Birmingham recently - his delay was nearly 5 hours as the flight from Birmingham to Cancun was delayed.

Is there something about these flight destinations that causes these delays so frequently - surely not all can be "technical" or "extraordinary"...............food for thought?

Basingstoke_Betty

maghater wrote: »

Doors are an integral part of operating an airline (Sturgeon 70), try Rgalitis v Latvijas para 28ish talks about airlines building "slack" into schedules to cover ecs

Hi - I've just tried googling Rgalitis v Latvijas as this is important to my case too but there are zero references on google (weird) Do you have a link to this please?
Thanks,
BB

Basingstoke_Betty

matt2baker wrote: »

Having played catch-up on here to see the latest situation with the latest round of Thomson re-buffs and Thomson Tactics, it seems that the two claims I am involved with are amongst the top delay destinations.

Cancun seems almost a clear winner, and Cape Verde comes fairly high up the list too. My delays were from Birmingham to Cape Verde, and from Manchester to Cancun. The amount of posts with these as delay claims seems "an extraordinary circumstance"

My son flew from Cancun back to Birmingham recently - his delay was nearly 5 hours as the flight from Birmingham to Cancun was delayed.

Is there something about these flight destinations that causes these delays so frequently - surely not all can be "technical" or "extraordinary"...............food for thought?

Mine is for Cape Verde and the answer is very very simple.....

These medium range flights rely on one crew doing both legs of the journey. If there is a delay on the first of the two flights these crews have to do, then it means that the 2nd flight in their schedule cannot be made because the crew do not have enough legal hours to finish the journey.

In my case, a 1 1/2 hour delay on the first flight resulted in an 18 1/2 hour delay for MY flight - and as far as I can see they don't have a leg to stand on - EC's cannot possibly cover poor staff rota management.

I cannot wait to get into a court and discuss this with a judge - Thomsons are fools. If they had better scheduling and didn't try to get two flights out of one set of staff with no margin for error, they would have saved themselves a fortune in what will end up being a massive compensation pay out.

An effective stand by crew system would have solved this completely. Idiots.

There, have vented now. Sorry.
BB

Vauban

Basingstoke_Betty wrote: »

Hi - I've just tried googling Rgalitis v Latvijas as this is important to my case too but there are zero references on google (weird) Do you have a link to this please?
Thanks,
BB

I think perhaps he means this: http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:62010CJ0294:EN:HTML

I'd be careful though about citing it in your defence. It applies to extraordinary circumstances, so claiming its provisions means you accept the original cause is extraordinary. (Plus the conclusions of the judgement aren't actually that helpful, IMHO.)

P_Doff

Basingstoke_Betty wrote: »

Hi - I've just tried googling Rgalitis v Latvijas as this is important to my case too but there are zero references on google (weird) Do you have a link to this please?
Thanks,
BB

I think you'll find it is Eglitis.
http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:62010CJ0294:EN:HTML

paul600rr

Hi all well i had over 3hr delay from gran canaria back in 2012 so i sent thomson a letter from the templates claiming my costs back, I sent in my boarding cards so photo copied them sent them to and after 2 month wait i get the rejection letter today heres what they say to get out of paying another EC

as part of our investigation we have looked into the flight details which surround your experience from our internal flights logs we can see that the delay was caused by a technical issue which occurred proir to departure on the previous flight. this un fortunately caused a knock on delay to the flights which followed including the TOM2677 the technical issue was not something which could have been foreseen by the airline and was not due to poor maintenance for these reasons this flight delay falls under extraordinary circumstance.

in case of your flight the cause of the delay was due to a delay to another aircraft due to "unexpected flight safety shortcoming" arising from the discovery of a technical defect that doesn't fall into the category of something that was or ought to have been dicovered during routine maintenance

they go on about other bits about EC so any help or advice please as they have declined my claim what do you guys think i should pursue it further or are thomson in the right on this one Help please ???????

it also mentions further down about CJEU in the judgment on Nelson v Lufthansa and C629/10 TUI

thanks
Paul

Vauban

paul600rr wrote: »

Hi all well i had over 3hr delay from gran canaria back in 2012 so i sent thomson a letter from the templates claiming my costs back, I sent in my boarding cards so photo copied them sent them to and after 2 month wait i get the rejection letter today heres what they say to get out of paying another EC

as part of our investigation we have looked into the flight details which surround your experience from our internal flights logs we can see that the delay was caused by a technical issue which occurred proir to departure on the previous flight. this un fortunately caused a knock on delay to the flights which followed including the TOM2677 the technical issue was not something which could have been foreseen by the airline and was not due to poor maintenance for these reasons this flight delay falls under extraordinary circumstance.

in case of your flight the cause of the delay was due to a delay to another aircraft due to "unexpected flight safety shortcoming" arising from the discovery of a technical defect that doesn't fall into the category of something that was or ought to have been dicovered during routine maintenance

they go on about other bits about EC so any help or advice please as they have declined my claim what do you guys think i should pursue it further or are thomson in the right on this one Help please ???????

it also mentions further down about CJEU in the judgment on Nelson v Lufthansa and C629/10 TUI

thanks
Paul

As there is nothing in the regulation that says the predictability of the fault or the adequacy of the maintenance schedules make technical failures "extraordinary", I would respectively contend that the airline are feeding you bovine excrement. Take 'em to court, and end this nonsense, would be my advice.