We cant use our flights, have we lost everthing?

mbankscrompton

FIRST: Lets start with the good news, my wife is pregnant and we are expecting our first child in December.

AND THE BAD NEWS: We are booked to go to Canada in Feb 08 and I have been told that the most I will receive in return will be our taxes, thats about £100!!

Can anyone help? can they really get away with only giving us our taxes back? It seems so unjust that the company called Canadian Affair will be able to receive a refund from the airline however not pass it on to the customer

PLEASE CAN SOMEONE HELP!!!!

MANY THANKS:mad:

poppy_f1

most airlines dont offer refunds anyway so its unlilkely this company would get the cash instead of you

sooz

congratulations!

alternative plan if you can't get a refund.........

life doesn't stop when you have a baby. If it's due in December and you're flights are in Feb, it'll be atleast 2 months old. At that age they are very cute and very portable, especially if breastfed. It'll be free on the flight, and the hotel should be able to provide a travel cot for you.

Just remember to send off for a passport as soon as s/he's born.

(DS2 got his passport when he was 2 weeks old, and has just come back from safari aged 6 months!)

paulinespens

Speak to airline direct.

photome

Agree with sooz..Take the baby with you...we did.

nelly_2

Bang it on ebay?


The holliday not the baby

chartreuse_2

You definitely need to speak with the airline. Here's some info that might help when you do.

It all depends on the conditions attached to your tickets. Broadly, there are four types (I'm oversimplifying here):
1. Fully refundable, fully changeable.
2. Non-refundable, fully changeable.
3. Non-refundable, changeable with a change fee.
4. Non-refundable, non-changeable.

Clearly, you don't have type 1. If you have type 4, then you're SOL, unless somebody bends the rules for you.

However, if you have type 2 or 3, there's a trick known as parking. What you do is change your existing tickets (paying the change fee if necessary) for the most flexible ticket you can find with the same airline (from anywhere to anywhere, it doesn't matter) for dates as far in advance as you can (the maximum is usually 330 days).

What you're doing is parking the value of the tickets you can't use in some new tickets that you don't intend to use.

Then, when you're ready to travel (before the new tickets expire), you change them again to the flights you want.

I've ended up losing as little as £50 on £500 quid non-refundable tickets using this method.

Hope this helps and congratulations

N9eav

Our daughter was born in USA, (when we were students there) we got her an American passport (quicker than a UK one through the embassy) Flew home for Christmas. Baby cost 10% of the fare, had a bulkhead travel cot on the plane. No problems at all... Easy peasy... 6 weeks old at the time.

mystic_trev

mbankscrompton wrote: »

It seems so unjust that the company called Canadian Affair will be able to receive a refund from the airline however not pass it on to the customer

Sorry to here of your plight. However, it looks like you purchased a non- refundable ticket so they are perfectly within their rights. Canadain Affair didn't get your wife pregnant (unless I've misread and she had an Affair with a Canadain!) so it's not their responsibility.

Andy_L

Travel Insurance?

lisyloo

Does travel insurance cover you for pregnancy?
I would guess that they don't because it's something you planned and did deliberately.

I don't mean that to come out wrong but insurance is there to cover unexpected eventualities.

If you KNEW you were planning to have a baby or (for example) KNEW you had an operation pending then that's not usually the kind of thing that they would cover, but check it out in case I'm wrong.