Flight delay and cancellation compensation, Tui/Thomson ONLY

spaceaarvark

maxwell33 wrote: »

Could you please afford me some advice?

Approximately 5 years ago our Tenerife to Doncaster flight was redirected to Casablanca, Morocco as a passenger was taken ill.

We spent hours on the tarmac awaiting Doctors and then it was announced that the crew had run out of flying time. As Casablanca was not a Thompson airport there was no substitute crew to fly the plane. We were transferred late into the evening to hotels. No food was available either complimentary or to buy. We eventually left Casablanca and arrived in Doncaster almost 24 hours later.

Our insurance did not pay anything as it only covered breakdown, fog etc but not passenger illness. I wrote to Thomson but they said that there was nothing they could or would do.

Needless to say we have thrown tickets etc. Is it worth trying some sort of claim and were should we start?

Any advice would be appreciated.

You don't have to have tickets, boarding passes or anything like that, but you do need to know the details of the flight - without those you are dead in the water. With the best will in the world, you cannot expect to go to Thomson and say "I was delayed some time ago, please give me some money"! :laugh:

I bet you can narrow the date down to a month or two, and you know where you were flying from, where you were flying to and what airline it was. The FlightStats website allows you to search based on that info (picking one day at a time, unfortunately), so you should be able to find the details of your delayed flight.

When you have those, get in touch with Thomson to request compensation, and when they refuse you will be in a position to go down the small claims route.

BTW, I hope "approximately 5 years ago" doesn't mean 6 years ago - in which case you would be out of luck (and out of time).

PS. On re-reading the reason for your delay, I am not sure that you will be eligible. Having to divert for a medical emergency is probably a valid "extraordinary circumstance" in that the airline could not possibly be expected to have anticipated it. Sorry!

spaceaarvark

chiv wrote: »

Following your recent articles and programme ref. Claiming for flight delays I submiitted a claim for a delay in January 2010.
I received a letter rejecting the claim on the following basis, please can you advise if this is correct :-

“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 two years. We, therefore, can't consider claims for
flights that were delayed more than two years ago.”
Regards
25/04/2013

Dip your toes into any page of this thread and you will find someone else asking the same question.
The answer is NO - it is not correct. This is Thomson's attempt to make you go away. Pursue it further if you have the time and inclination (many others are already doing so).

Vauban

maxwell33 wrote: »

Could you please afford me some advice?

Approximately 5 years ago our Tenerife to Doncaster flight was redirected to Casablanca, Morocco as a passenger was taken ill.

We spent hours on the tarmac awaiting Doctors and then it was announced that the crew had run out of flying time. As Casablanca was not a Thompson airport there was no substitute crew to fly the plane. We were transferred late into the evening to hotels. No food was available either complimentary or to buy. We eventually left Casablanca and arrived in Doncaster almost 24 hours later.

Our insurance did not pay anything as it only covered breakdown, fog etc but not passenger illness. I wrote to Thomson but they said that there was nothing they could or would do.

Needless to say we have thrown tickets etc. Is it worth trying some sort of claim and were should we start?

Any advice would be appreciated.

I gave you advice this afternoon when you posted on another thread. Perhaps you didn't like the advice? But I don't think you have a claim - will a judge think that a delay caused by an emergency diversion because a passenger fell ill is the airline's fault?

markavo1

Vauban wrote: »

I gave you advice this afternoon when you posted on another thread. Perhaps you didn't like the advice? But I don't think you have a claim - will a judge think that a delay caused by an emergency diversion because a passenger fell ill is the airline's fault?

Agreed. I think any reasonable judge would consider this extraordinary circumstances. Totally unforeseen by Thomson, and, to be fair, why should you get compensation because some poor soul fell so ill on the plane that your flight had to be diverted

dpccrc6

Hi,


I sent a NBA letter February 13th and have not heard anything from them yet. Any suggestions to what I should do next and when? And other than the 3 claims that Thomson have settled just before going to court does anyone know if anyone has actually received any compensation from Thomson?

:beer:

markavo1

dpccrc6 wrote: »

Hi,


I sent a NBA letter February 13th and have not heard anything from them yet. Any suggestions to what I should do next and when? And other than the 3 claims that Thomson have settled just before going to court does anyone know if anyone has actually received any compensation from Thomson?

:beer:

take action!!! the only way you are going to get any sort of compensation from Thomson is to start a court claim

Bonters

dpccrc6 wrote: »

Hi,


I sent a NBA letter February 13th and have not heard anything from them yet. Any suggestions to what I should do next and when? And other than the 3 claims that Thomson have settled just before going to court does anyone know if anyone has actually received any compensation from Thomson?

:beer:

I'm in much the same boat. Thomson are now ignoring me and have not even replied to my NBA. The last communication I received relied upon their supposed 2 year time limit and that seems to be their last word on it. I want to make sure I do this right and so I've requested EUClaim to take up my case. Ok, I'll lose some of the eventual settlement but I prefer that than messing it up on my own. I suspect that Thomson will take a lot more notice of a professional service backed by solicitors than they will me. My aim is to cost them the maximum and receive a percentage of something rather than 100% of nothing, if you see my logic? Some will prefer to do it themselves, and I wish them luck.
:beer:

romanby1

Bonters wrote: »

I'm in much the same boat. Thomson are now ignoring me and have not even replied to my NBA. The last communication I received relied upon their supposed 2 year time limit and that seems to be their last word on it. I want to make sure I do this right and so I've requested EUClaim to take up my case. Ok, I'll lose some of the eventual settlement but I prefer that than messing it up on my own. I suspect that Thomson will take a lot more notice of a professional service backed by solicitors than they will me. My aim is to cost them the maximum and receive a percentage of something rather than 100% of nothing, if you see my logic? Some will prefer to do it themselves, and I wish them luck.
:beer:

I would not be too sure of Thomsons taking notice.
Thomsons failed to return the Allocation Questionaire on time to the court in our case and the file is now before the judge at our local County Court for his/her descision as to the next step.

spaceaarvark

Received Thomson's defence to my MCOL today. They are going for a two pronged "it is more than two years" and "it was a technical fault and therefore extraordinary circumstances".

Looking forward to challenging both of these - particularly the technical fault. According to what the pilot told us, the nature of the fault was definitely due to sloppy maintenance rather than an unavoidable event!

And on this topic: Anyone know where I stand on introducing "what the pilot told us" in evidence? It seems a bit like hearsay, and I am thinking that I may just have to go down a firm line of having Thomson explain exactly the nature of the technical fault.

romanby1

spaceaarvark wrote: »

Received Thomson's defence to my MCOL today. They are going for a two pronged "it is more than two years" and "it was a technical fault and therefore extraordinary circumstances".

Looking forward to challenging both of these - particularly the technical fault. According to what the pilot told us, the nature of the fault was definitely due to sloppy maintenance rather than an unavoidable event!

And on this topic: Anyone know where I stand on introducing "what the pilot told us" in evidence? It seems a bit like hearsay, and I am thinking that I may just have to go down a firm line of having Thomson explain exactly the nature of the technical fault.

In our case we were told at check in we would be delayed 2-3 hours as the plane that was to be scheduled for our flight was divertered to the US. The actual delay was 6 and a half hours. The pilot over the intercom said that the plane we eventually boarded was not the diverted plane.
We in our submissiion on the Allocation questionaire asked the court to tell Thomsons to provide the Registration Nos. of both planes, flight logs and the maintanance logs.