Compensation for delayed flights Discussion Area

Conel

Centipede100 wrote: »

Conel

Firstly, the watchword in this situation is: don't get mad, get even.

Secondly, you now have the airline's official reason for denying your claim so can work on attempting to deconstruct that defence over the next couple of months before the final ruling on the Sturgeon challenge is handed down by the learned judges of the ECJ.

The letter you have received is somewhat of a templated stock response by the airline so not a surprise nor a shock and certainly shouldn't enrage you as these letters are churned out in their dozens each day in response to similar letters to your own.

Start some detailed research of the meteorological conditions at LGW and BER on the day in question if you want to progress your legal claim in the Autumn. Meantime, chill out and enjoy the summer's day we appear to be enjoying today!

I know, it is just so hard to not get furious when you are blatantly being lied to!

Ok, I am being very lame now but is there a website where I can start my research? I have no idea where to start!

I wish I could enjoy the sunshine, stuck in an office today:mad:

delvey

Centipede100 wrote: »

You could start with www.flightstats.co.uk. Register (free) then you can obtain details of flights departing LGW around the same original time as your flight, check the status of other flights that flew the same route as well as check the arrivals status for flights at BER at the same time as yours.

I think someone posted upthread about this in response to your original question.

The official METARS (weather for pilots) data for the date and time in question should be a matter of public record. I tried this site for a start: http://i.wund.com/auto/iphone/history/airport/EDDB/2012/6/11/DailyHistory.html

but there must be plenty of others.

Happy researching!

As above, get a full list of the weather stations at each airport, and ;earn to understand the METARs

As I have already said, no other easyjet flight from Gatwick or Berlin was cancelled that day, so presumably you flight must of occurred a sudden and short extreme weather? I doubt that

bazaar_2

Skat2605 wrote: »

Hi MoneySaving Expert I need your advice

I've just got a reply back from Thomas Cook about a complaint I lodged after a 7 hour delay on the way to a family holiday in Cuba on the 20th May this year.

The basics are that we (2 adults, 1 child) were delayed for 7 hours at manchester airport. We were given the standard £6 food vouchers, eventually as we were only given £3 each at the time of booking in, for food/drinks and left to wait. I won't go in to the rest of the complaint but the plane was apparently late due to a delay on the previous return flight from Cancun, this was for an initial 5 hours but then developed a technical fault while at Manchester resulting in a further 2 hour delay. At this point it was discussed that Thomas Cook were considering flying up a replacement plane from Gatwick to get us to our destination. This turned out to be unnecessary as the further delay did turn out to be for 2 hours as we were informed.

In the letter I have received, after i stated I would like to claim under EU-Regulation 261/2004 the €600 as stated, they said that all claims had been suspended and as such they were sorry but they "must refuse your request for compensation". My understanding was that similarly to the banking claims that are ongoing currently that all claims would indeed be put on hold and don't refused. Is that correct? Where do I go from here as I don't feel that the reasons for delay were due to "unforeseen circumstances" due to someone being in the position to obtain another plane for us from Gatwick if needed?

Thanks
Simon

Exact same thing for me, delayed on 23rd June from Bristol, then at manchester. ours was over 4 hours at Bristol then 2 hours at Manchester because they parked over the fuel vents and had to be pushed back. Just filling out the online complaint form now.

LouHey

Dear MoneySavingExpert,

I am after some of your amazing advice please. Our flight details were as follows:
Flight number TOM6789
Flight date 08/07/2012
Departure aiport - Larnaca
Arrival airport - Exeter
Schedule departure 21.45 GMT 08/07/2012
Actual departure time 13.40 GMT 09/07/2012

This lead to an overall delay of 15 hours 55 minutes. The reason for the delay in the flight was due to the aircraft suffering a technical problem before departure from the UK and the part they required was not available locally.

Thomson did put us in a hotel for the night and provided us with an evening meal, breakfast and lunch together with transport to the airport. However, me and my partner were both intending on going back to work but we obviously had to have an additional day off.

I was wondering if you think we have a case to claim compensation under the EU regulation stated above and if we do, how do we go about making a claim and what should we say?

I look forward to receiving your reply and many thanks in advance.

LouHey

delvey

Can I ask are the claims on 'stay' in Scotland, as they have different courts?

Tandia

Hello to the very helpful posters on this forum!

I have just finished reading through from page 76 of this thread, and think I have a good understanding of the current state of the law regarding compensation for delays, and am planning to send a letter lodging my claim for compensation as suggested above, but I do still have a couple of questions.

My flight details were as follows:
Flight - TCX1867 (Thomas Cook) from Izmir to Gatwick

Times and dates below (in local time)
Scheduled departure - 22.25 30 June 2012
Actual departure - 15.00 1 July 2012
Scheduled arrival - 00.25 1 July 2012
Actual arrival - 16.45 1 July 2012

There is quite a saga to the delay we suffered and it was a truly horrific experience, but as that is probably the case for most people on here, I won't bore you with all the details. I think the key facts which are relevant to my questions are as follows:

We were a party of 5 - 2 adults, 2 children (5 and 3) and one infant (8 months).

We were eventually provided with two hotel rooms, which we reached with our luggage at about 6am (I think - it was all a bit blurry by then!). Up to the point of reaching this room, we had not been provided with any food or drink (this was about 7½ hours after our flight was due to depart), despite numerous requests for water (it was during a heat wave and we’d had to give up all our drinks at security hours before). We were not provided with a cot for our baby, and the hotel specifically told me that they didn’t have any cots available and the airline had not informed them there were any babies coming (ours was not the only baby on the flight either). I had mentioned to the rep at the airport that we would need a cot many hours earlier. We got some bottled water in the room and breakfast at the hotel the next morning, but this was the only food or drink we received until we got a meal on the flight at I’d guess about 4pm the next day.

Our holiday was booked with Neilson, which is a part of Thomas Cook. The deal we received included a free child place, but this meant we had to pay an ‘under occupancy’ supplement (£294) and our baby was basically free, although there was a £50 infant charge.

They were never totally clear about the reason for the delay, and the message they finally gave us on the plane was almost impossible to understand, but the story we were told by the rep was that it was a technical fault on the plane, which they’d had to fly an engineer out from the UK to fix, but that when he got there he was outside the regulation hours he could work, so he couldn’t fix it until the next day! The reason cited in the letter they handed us as we stepped off the plane was “an unforeseen operationally significant defect”. This was repeated in a letter emailed from Neilson a few days after our return.

The letter we got as we got off the plane also said “WE WOULD LIKE TO DRAW YOUR ATTENTION TO THE REVERSE OF THIS LETTER, WHICH GIVES DETAILS OF YOUR RIGHTS UNDER THE AIR PASSENGER RIGHTS EC REGULATION 261.2004” – this was particularly helpful, as the back of the letter was blank!! The letter we received from Neilson did not mention EC rights at all and simply said “Although we are unable to offer any form of refund or compensatory payment, some insurance companies do incorporate cover for such eventualities within their policies.”

So my questions are as follows:
1. Do I write to Neilson (the division of Thomas Cook we booked with) or Thomas Cook direct, and who do I write to at either company?
2. Am I entitled to claim compensation for both of my older children, when one of them was a free child place, and can I claim for an infant?
3. Can I claim any additional compensation for breach of our rights to drinks / food or for the ridiculous amount of time it took to get us to a hotel or the fact we had nowhere for my baby to safely sleep? We bought a couple of tiny bottles of water at the airport, but we don’t have receipts, and the cost of these was only a couple of Turkish Lira (this was all we had left). We basically went thirsty for hours.
4. Is the lack of reference to our rights something I should mention in the letter, as I believe this is also in breach of the EC regulations?
5. The research I did before looking at this forum mentioned that I should send the Air Passenger Rights EU Complaint Form along with my letter to the airline. Do you think this is helpful / worthwhile?

Many thanks in advance for any help you can give, and apologies that this post is so long!

crobar

Hi helpful folk,

I booked a direct flight from Glasgow to Canada with sunwing airlines (something i am beginning to regret after checking out some reviews). Just over two weeks before departure i was told the flight was being rescheduled to go via London Gatwick, and would leave slightly earlier from Glasgow and arrive about 3 hours later than scheduled in Canada. I will also now have a 90 minute wait at Gatwick without disembarking.

I can accept the delay, apart from the fact that it now makes a connection with another airline in Canada quite tight. If i miss this flight is there any action i can take to compensate me for this? The flight's in about a week's time.

Cheers

Tandia

Thanks so much for your swift response to my queries.

Just to clarify (although I appreciate you may not know the answer to this question), do you think the 'admin fee' paid in respect of an infant counts as paying something towards the air fare? As is normal for under 2s, she didn't get a seat, but I'm not sure if that makes any difference. I just want to make sure I'm asking for the right amount of compensation from the outset, so as not to confuse matters!

Such a shame that we can't get any compensation for their appalling service regarding the hotel/drinks. I'm not sure how knowing my rights could have changed matters there though, as they kept promising to provide drinks, so if we'd managed to buy our own (not that we had any currency left) and then they'd subsequently given us some we would not have been reimbursed for the ones we'd bought, and equally they did get us to a hotel, they just took their sweet time about doing so! I think they did these things on purpose to minimise their costs. Once all this is resolved I think I will write to the CAA as it might as well be on record in case they persist in treating their passengers this way.

I'd like to say I would just never fly with them again, but Neilson holidays are really excellent, and you can't avoid flying with Thomas Cook if you go with them!

bazaar_2

It is also advisable to all to claim compensation under denied boarding regulations which mighrt make them move a little quicker.
Check if there have been similar 'technical' difficulties also. This will shoot down their claims of exceptional circumstances as it would be a lack of due care and attention in their maintenance procedures which cause a persistant failure.
On my claim, this is what is going in my official ( Signed for postage ) letter. I'll let you lnow what happens.
By the way, I havent had a reply from the online Thompson form I filled out last week.

ExGliwice

My flight in Feb 2012 was delayed for 5h, between ACE MAD. Since Ryanair, were in total denial, as usually, I went to AESA, spain civil aviation office, which confirmed, that Ryanair should compensate me with 400 Euro. They also sent copy of their judgement to Ryanair.

delay of the flight was caused due to an unexpected flight safety shortcoming
....
Taking into consideration all of the aforesaid, AESA considers that the reason for the delay invoked by the company,
would not constitute extraordinary circumstances pursuant to Regulation (EC) No. 261/2004. Accordingly, the air
carrier should pay you compensation for the amount of 400 Euros per passenger considering that the distance
between Lanzarote and Madrid is 1.574 (more than 1.500 kilometers).

I got this letter 6 weeks ago, since then I did not have any contact attempt from Ryanair. Was anyone in such situation with Ryanair? Recently I sent them a written mail with 'kind' reminder.. (no response, yet)