Flight delay and cancellation compensation, Virgin Atlantic ONLY

JPears

Well done and congratulations.:T

pjrugby

Hi I was on the Newark flight.. i'm been trying to claim now for the past year.. via a company that charged £20 to process the claims : Flight Delayed.. very nice company always keep in touch via email.. however we are going no where.. !!!!!! over a year now and still no where.. very frustrating..

JPears

Have they issued legal proceedings?

hillbecks

We were delayed from our flight 22/12/09 10.25am for 9 hours and virgin citing weather caused the delay but Manchester airport was closed on the Sunday 20/12/09 but then was up and running on the 21/12/09 apart from 4 cancelled flights. Is it reasonable to do a notice before action letter to virgin for this. I have printed evidence from bbc news website.
Also, coming home on the 6/01/10, our flight was cancelled at Orlando and we were stuck there till 9/01/10. Again, Manchester airport was closed on the morning of 5/01/10 according to the bbc website but then it reopened at 1.00pm. Is it reasonable for us to have our flight cancelled from orlando that was due to leave there 6.30pm on 6/01/10. Virgin citing that closure of one of the airports on the way back caused extraordinary circumstances.
Am I doing the right thing sending a notice before action for both there and back.
Also would I do 2 separate letters? especially if I do a small claims court application?
Do I put printed quotes from the bbc news websites about Manchester airport.
Any help greatly appreciated thank you.

Vauban

hillbecks wrote: »

We were delayed from our flight 22/12/09 10.25am for 9 hours and virgin citing weather caused the delay but Manchester airport was closed on the Sunday 20/12/09 but then was up and running on the 21/12/09 apart from 4 cancelled flights. Is it reasonable to do a notice before action letter to virgin for this. I have printed evidence from bbc news website.
Also, coming home on the 6/01/10, our flight was cancelled at Orlando and we were stuck there till 9/01/10. Again, Manchester airport was closed on the morning of 5/01/10 according to the bbc website but then it reopened at 1.00pm. Is it reasonable for us to have our flight cancelled from orlando that was due to leave there 6.30pm on 6/01/10. Virgin citing that closure of one of the airports on the way back caused extraordinary circumstances.
Am I doing the right thing sending a notice before action for both there and back.
Also would I do 2 separate letters? especially if I do a small claims court application?
Do I put printed quotes from the bbc news websites about Manchester airport.
Any help greatly appreciated thank you.

One NBA and court claim suffices for both delays - it's one claim for two flights.

You don't need to get into the detail at this stage, but you might want to look at flightstats.co.uk which will show you which flights left Manchester and when - which will help substantiate you assertion that weather was not a factor affecting your flight directly.

Miss.P

Hi All,

VS75 10/04/09 10.25 Manchester to Orlando (3h 19min arrival delay)

My claim has been rejected for the following reason:

The Captain scheduled to operate your flight became unwell at the aircraft, shortly prior to passenger boarding. We immediately looked for a replacement captain to operate the flight through our standby allocation. A replacement captain was found in the Manchester area (with it also being Good Friday flights from our main hubs of Gatwick and Heathrow were infrequent, so positioning a captain from here would have caused a further delay to the flight.) The replacement captain was due to arrive so that the flight would be able to depart at 12:45, however during the captain's journey to the airport he became further delayed increasing the overall delay.

Is this worth taking further? TIA

David_e

Miss.P wrote: »

Is this worth taking further? TIA

Have a look at the FAQs and search the forum for "sickness", etc. It's common cause of delays.

Miss.P

David_e wrote: »

Have a look at the FAQs and search the forum for "sickness", etc. It's common cause of delays.

Thank you for the quick reply, I have taken a look at the forum and it looks like there are a few people who are due in court soon with regards to pilot sickness on a Virgin flight. Hopefully they will let us know how they got on. I am just worried that my claim would be a waste of time as the pilot got sick so close to boarding.

Vauban

Miss.P wrote: »

Thank you for the quick reply, I have taken a look at the forum and it looks like there are a few people who are due in court soon with regards to pilot sickness on a Virgin flight. Hopefully they will let us know how they got on. I am just worried that my claim would be a waste of time as the pilot got sick so close to boarding.

Yes. I would share that concern. And the fact that your delay was only just outside the 3 hours mark suggests Virgin acted reasonably quickly. I would not pursue this, if it were me.

David_e

Miss.P wrote: »

Thank you for the quick reply, I have taken a look at the forum and it looks like there are a few people who are due in court soon with regards to pilot sickness on a Virgin flight. Hopefully they will let us know how they got on. I am just worried that my claim would be a waste of time as the pilot got sick so close to boarding.

It's not one of the causes of delay I've read much about. It's not (as far as I can see) quite as straightforward as a technical fault.

I'd look at your facts compared to the ones you have read about and see if you conclude you have a stronger or weaker case.

My very uninformed (and, indeed, probably not very helpful) view is that your case could be borderline - subject to exact timings.