Flight delay and cancellation compensation, Tui/Thomson ONLY

romanby1

Vauban wrote: »

Be patient! If by 30 days or so no defence has been received, contact the Court for advice - but you should be able to move for a judgement.

Thomsons defence in our case was returned by email to the court on the 28th. day, the last day possible. The allocation questionnaire was dated 5 days later to be returned within 14 days.
I suggest you hang on for a few days.

Tommy2000

Hi to everyone, I have just signed up to this forum in order to offer encouragement to you all in your claims against Thomson Airways.

On 25th April 2013 at Truro County Court my daughter won her case against Thomson Airways for a 7 hour delay in her flight from Exeter to Ibiza (TOM6642) on 10th October 2009.

My daughter was claiming on behalf of herself and her friend and was awarded £525 including costs, and as she is currently in Australia, I represented her in Court.

The matter had been ongoing for quite a long time with an initial claim being lodged with the Court in July 2010 after Thomson Airways ignored all our claim letters and a' Letter Before Action' regarding the EC-261/2004 regulation.

Once the claim had been issued Thomson defended the claim and the basis was that EC-261/2004 did not apply to delays or, in the alternative, a technical fault with the aircraft was 'extraordinary circumstances'.

Having cited Sturgeon, Wallentin & Kramme as 3 cases in support of the claim and with a stalemate position between the parties, the Court set a date of 21st December 2010 for a hearing.

On 20th October Thomson Airways asked the Court to stay the claim pending the hearing of the EC case to review EC-261/2004 and on 10th December 2010 the Court stayed the claim pending the determination of CO/6569/2010/ECJ.

After waiting for a couple of years, and following the ruling from the EC in November 2012 that flight delays over 3 hours were to be included for compensation, and after contacting the Court, a Directions Hearing was set for 4th February 2013 which was attended by Counsel for Thomson Airways and this resulted in a Full Hearing on 25th April 2013 which was attended by Thomson Airways own legal representative.

Thomson Airways defence and skeleton argument centered on a sensor in the hydraulic fluid tank going faulty 20 minutes before scheduled take off, in assessing whether the fault was an extraordinary circumstance they provided witness statements from their engineering manager and program delivery manager in order to try to prove that the part had no history of failure and that a replacement plane was provided as early as possible.

Thomson Airways also relied on the EC case Wallentin-Herman v Alitalia paragraphs 24 & 25, in that the aircraft had had regular maintenance, and because the fault was detected outside of regular maintenance and was not because of poor maintenance, then the defect could not be considered as inherent with the normal operations of the airline.

My daughters case was that technical faults with aircraft are inherent in the airline business and as such contingency plans for short term supply of parts and / or replacement aircraft, either by contract, hire or their own aircraft availability should be in place and that not 'all reasonable measures' had been taken to ensure the service and satisfaction of my daughter and her friend.

After a short adjournment, the District Judge agreed with my daughter as claimant and found against Thomson Airways as defendant, we have received the Judgment Order today and now await receipt of the £525 by 16th May.

So to all of you battling with Thomson Airways, don't be put off by their prevarication and intimidation, if you get no positive response from them to your claim after giving them sufficient opportunity and time, just progress the matter to the County Court.

But you must be motivated and prepared to devote the time and effort into seeing the matter through.

Good Luck!

kimbo_15

Please can you let me know if you have successfully claimed compensation for the 6+ hour delay on this flight?

Thomsons are refusing to pay out saying the claim is out of date even though my first letter of complaint was sent in 2009.

I wrote requesting they reconsider my claim and received the same pithy response others have received.

Enough is enough. I intend to send an LBA letter this weekend.


Kim

Vauban

Tommy2000 wrote: »

Hi to everyone, I have just signed up to this forum in order to offer encouragement to you all in your claims against Thomson Airways.

... My daughters case was that technical faults with aircraft are inherent in the airline business and as such contingency plans for short term supply of parts and / or replacement aircraft, either by contract, hire or their own aircraft availability should be in place and that not 'all reasonable measures' had been taken to ensure the service and satisfaction of my daughter and her friend.

After a short adjournment, the District Judge agreed with my daughter as claimant and found against Thomson Airways as defendant, we have received the Judgment Order today and now await receipt of the £525 by 16th May.

Fantastic - my congratulations. I think your defence is the one that most people here will be using, and accords with my own interpreation of Wallentin et al. I am glad you had a judge who understands European law! Well done!:beer:

Richmond_Park

I contacted Thomson regarding a 4 and a half hour delay from Crete to Manchester in August 2009, using the template letter from this site.

The reply from Thomson (which, to be fair, only took just over a week) was the typical 'despite our best efforts, delays unfortunately can occur...... Etc', and then this paragraph:

'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" need to be brought within two years. We, therefore can't consider claims for flights that were delayed more than two years ago'

Is this right? Do I just accept this, or if not what is my next stage?

I hope someone on here will be able to help. Thanks in advance.

Willornot

We had a 24 hr delay on flight Tom 142 in dec 2012. Complained to Thomson, sent documents to fill out with detail, returned, (every letter takes them up to 56 days to respond) reply was lengthy, but 'extraordinary circumstances' therefore no compensation. A faulty part on the plane which could not have been foreseen. We actually sat on the Tarmac on the plane for over 2hrs. I have replied requesting copies of the engineers report since we dispute the fault. We were told unofficially, that the crew had 'run out of flying time' and there was no standby crew. Still awaiting response, another 56 days for them to respond.
Do you think a CAA claim would be advisable now?

Mark2spark

A great post by Tommy 2000 which is heartening to hear that pre flight last minute faults are not EC's (as was expected).

Court is the only way forward people.

spaceaarvark

Willornot wrote: »

We had a 24 hr delay on flight Tom 142 in dec 2012. Complained to Thomson, sent documents to fill out with detail, returned, (every letter takes them up to 56 days to respond) reply was lengthy, but 'extraordinary circumstances' therefore no compensation. A faulty part on the plane which could not have been foreseen. We actually sat on the Tarmac on the plane for over 2hrs. I have replied requesting copies of the engineers report since we dispute the fault. We were told unofficially, that the crew had 'run out of flying time' and there was no standby crew. Still awaiting response, another 56 days for them to respond.
Do you think a CAA claim would be advisable now?

Not sure what you mean by a CAA claim.
IMO involving the CAA is a waste of time in these disputes.
NBA and MCOL are now the way to go; if you need more info, look at the FAQs for this forum.
(Apologies for so many TLAs in so few lines!)

richardw

Tommy2000 wrote: »

..My daughters case was that technical faults with aircraft are inherent in the airline business and as such contingency plans for short term supply of parts and / or replacement aircraft, either by contract, hire or their own aircraft availability should be in place and that not 'all reasonable measures' had been taken to ensure the service and satisfaction of my daughter and her friend....

Exactly. Well done.

Bamb0ozle

Hi Everyone,

I am attempting a claim against Thompson for a flight in 2011 from Faro to Gatwick, we had a 4 hour delay while we had to wait for a plane to be sent to us from Cyprus, Thompson have refused our claim on extraordinary circumstances, they are claiming that the plane coming from Gatwick, fully loaded to drop off at Faro had been hit by a refuelling tender and it had to be "passed fit" before taking to the skies, so a plane was brought from Cyprus to pick up these passengers from Gatwick and bring them out to Faro, now I totally understand that being hit by a fuel tender is out of Thompsons hands, but I seem to remember the pilot telling us that the plane had broken down at Gatwick and nothing about being hit by a fuel tender, also at what point does a plane become your official plane for a particular flight, it hadn't left Gatwick and could not have even take on it's passengers yet if it was being refuelled.

So my question is do I still have grounds to chase a claim with Thompson?