Compensation for delayed flights Discussion Area

Noop

Looks like a double whammy here, not only have i not heard from Monarch about the January flight, Easyjet have decided to cancel my partners flight from Germany this evening. Typical!

Best bit, easyjet shut, handling agent no joy, they've left the whole plane dumped in the airport and they've shut up shop and left. No offer of anything....

richjp

But was it definitely cancelled??

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1250080/EasyJet-email-blunder-causes-travel-chaos.html

Noop

Yeh definately cancelled, they got a new flight number the next day. They put up half the passengers from the flight, and left the others in the airport, rather kind of them.

So 7 weeks later, i've had a response from Monarch regarding my 24 hour delay, suprise suprise, no plan to cough up for compo, it's rather a long winded email with a few appreciated apologies, however here's one paragraph to sum up, any thoughts appreciated on whether this is a no go, or whether to pursue:

"
Under EU Regulations carriers must provide a level of assistance and care if a delay extends 2 hours or more. In cases where there is a delay of over 5 hours the passenger can choose to travel on the delayed flight and accept further assistance or choose not to travel and take a refund for the un-used leg. I’m afraid that carriers are not required to pay compensation for delay under this regulation, nor are we liable to refund any additional costs incurred by passengers. I do appreciate that this may not be the response that you were hoping for, however, I hope you will understand that we will only pay compensation where we are legally liable to do so."

Noop

Think i've answered my own question, have quoted the Sturgeon case in response.

iansthomas

Hi all,

I'm hoping you can give me a bit of advice after a very bad experience in Lanzarote with Ryanair!

Basically we were due to fly home from Lanzarote to Bristol on the 17.10 flight on wednesday. The flight continued to be delayed, however, with little information provided as to what might happen. To be completely fair the weather was pretty bad and they decided to land at Gran Canaria until it improved. Later in the evening they then landed at Fuerteventura and dumped all the passengers there before finally landing at Lanzarote with an empty and refuelled plane at 22.25. For all of this time they were telling us they believed we would be taking off as soon as the plane landed. We were dubious having worked out that the pilots and crew had been in the plane since the original departure time from Bristol of 1.10(ish) but assumed that they had another crew to take us back. Finally at 23.15 the ryanair ground staff said that - shock - they'd all just realised that the crew weren't in a fit state to take us back and that we'd have to come back tomorrow for a flight at 12:00pm.

It is important to note at this point that for the whole 8 hours that they kept us in the airport (i.e. from check-in until 23.15) they refused to provide us with water or any other refreshments - first because 'Dublin says no' and then subsequently because the Dublin office was closed and nobody locally was allowed to OK it.

Following the announcement that the flight was postponed they then took 45 mins to hand out a small piece of paper with hotel names on it but refused to help us beyond that (i.e. told us we had to phone them all to try and secure our own rooms individually, book our own transfers and obviously pay for our own hotel rooms). It was chaos with 200-300 people all trying to secure a room in the middle of the night. Essentially they washed their hands of us, closed the airport and pushed us out into a storm at midnight - in our case with two very young children who were in a pretty bad state. When my wife tried to explain that we had no phone and no change to call the hotels on the list - in fact only a small number of remaining euros (and that we were obviously worried about being outside in a rainstorm at midnight with two children and nowhere to go) - the staff just shrugged and one even said "what do you want - do you want me to give you 2 euros out of my own pocket?". They refused to listen beyond that even though we were only really asking them to call a hotel on our behalf by that point as we just needed to know we had a secure place to go. Having looked briefly at the 'your rights' poster in the airport subsequently it seems as if giving us a phone call was the least they could have done.

Fortunately another passenger stepped in and gave us some change and we managed to secure a hotel room but by the time we took a taxi to the hotel and got to bed it was 1.30 and there was no refreshments available at the hotel.

On returning to the airport to check in the next day the irony was that they gave us a voucher for 5 euros to buy a drink - when we'd only just arrived and therefore just had breakfast. Worse than that, though, they only opened one check in desk so that a manager could sit with the agent to make sure that the vouchers were handed out 'correctly', thus making us a wait an inordinate amount of time to check in, delaying the flight and giving us insufficient time to use the voucher effectively anyway. We eventually took off a couple of hours late but thankfully did get flown back to Bristol.

The strange thing about it all is that we're pretty rational and understanding people - we understand about the weather and we understand that it's not their fault. What makes me most angry is the way that they held us there for so long without information when it should have been obvious to them long before how many hours the crew would have put in by the time they landed and by the fact that they didn't apologise once. All other airlines - including easyjet - had both given their passengers vouchers in good time and then put them on buses to accommodation for the night by 20:00 - i.e. when it was clear that they weren't going to be flying - whereas we were kept there and then just dumped outside the airport much later. Irrespective of who should have paid for the accommodation I feel that the situation with the crew seemed clear to us pretty early on even as non-experts and that they should have therefore been straight with us much earlier. This would have given us the opportunity to find somewhere to stay and have a sensible amount of sleep; instead they held us there and fed us nonsense for hours before sending us out with barely enough time to find somewhere and sleep before coming back.

I guess my question, therefore, is what we have a right to claim back from them as I'm so unhappy with the way things worked out that I now actively want to exercise whatever rights I have. I would imagine that they would claim from a compensation standpoint that it was 'extraordinary events' and that could perhaps be justified given the weather conditions (although Ryanair did land a Bournemouth flight and take those passengers home at about 21:00(ish)). I'm unsure if this claim gets them out of the 'duty of care' part, however - particularly the refusal to give us anything to drink or a phone call when they cut us loose. We've kept all receipts for taxis and hotel.

As a result any advice would be hugely appreciated before I start to correspond with Ryanair directly :-)

Thanks all

Ian

debbiedevon

iansthomas wrote: »

Hi all,

I'm hoping you can give me a bit of advice after a very bad experience in Lanzarote with Ryanair!

Basically we were due to fly home from Lanzarote to Bristol on the 17.10 flight on wednesday. The flight continued to be delayed, however, with little information provided as to what might happen. To be completely fair the weather was pretty bad and they decided to land at Gran Canaria until it improved. Later in the evening they then landed at Fuerteventura and dumped all the passengers there before finally landing at Lanzarote with an empty and refuelled plane at 22.25. For all of this time they were telling us they believed we would be taking off as soon as the plane landed. We were dubious having worked out that the pilots and crew had been in the plane since the original departure time from Bristol of 1.10(ish) but assumed that they had another crew to take us back. Finally at 23.15 the ryanair ground staff said that - shock - they'd all just realised that the crew weren't in a fit state to take us back and that we'd have to come back tomorrow for a flight at 12:00pm.

It is important to note at this point that for the whole 8 hours that they kept us in the airport (i.e. from check-in until 23.15) they refused to provide us with water or any other refreshments - first because 'Dublin says no' and then subsequently because the Dublin office was closed and nobody locally was allowed to OK it.

Following the announcement that the flight was postponed they then took 45 mins to hand out a small piece of paper with hotel names on it but refused to help us beyond that (i.e. told us we had to phone them all to try and secure our own rooms individually, book our own transfers and obviously pay for our own hotel rooms). It was chaos with 200-300 people all trying to secure a room in the middle of the night. Essentially they washed their hands of us, closed the airport and pushed us out into a storm at midnight - in our case with two very young children who were in a pretty bad state. When my wife tried to explain that we had no phone and no change to call the hotels on the list - in fact only a small number of remaining euros (and that we were obviously worried about being outside in a rainstorm at midnight with two children and nowhere to go) - the staff just shrugged and one even said "what do you want - do you want me to give you 2 euros out of my own pocket?". They refused to listen beyond that even though we were only really asking them to call a hotel on our behalf by that point as we just needed to know we had a secure place to go. Having looked briefly at the 'your rights' poster in the airport subsequently it seems as if giving us a phone call was the least they could have done.

Fortunately another passenger stepped in and gave us some change and we managed to secure a hotel room but by the time we took a taxi to the hotel and got to bed it was 1.30 and there was no refreshments available at the hotel.

On returning to the airport to check in the next day the irony was that they gave us a voucher for 5 euros to buy a drink - when we'd only just arrived and therefore just had breakfast. Worse than that, though, they only opened one check in desk so that a manager could sit with the agent to make sure that the vouchers were handed out 'correctly', thus making us a wait an inordinate amount of time to check in, delaying the flight and giving us insufficient time to use the voucher effectively anyway. We eventually took off a couple of hours late but thankfully did get flown back to Bristol.

The strange thing about it all is that we're pretty rational and understanding people - we understand about the weather and we understand that it's not their fault. What makes me most angry is the way that they held us there for so long without information when it should have been obvious to them long before how many hours the crew would have put in by the time they landed and by the fact that they didn't apologise once. All other airlines - including easyjet - had both given their passengers vouchers in good time and then put them on buses to accommodation for the night by 20:00 - i.e. when it was clear that they weren't going to be flying - whereas we were kept there and then just dumped outside the airport much later. Irrespective of who should have paid for the accommodation I feel that the situation with the crew seemed clear to us pretty early on even as non-experts and that they should have therefore been straight with us much earlier. This would have given us the opportunity to find somewhere to stay and have a sensible amount of sleep; instead they held us there and fed us nonsense for hours before sending us out with barely enough time to find somewhere and sleep before coming back.

I guess my question, therefore, is what we have a right to claim back from them as I'm so unhappy with the way things worked out that I now actively want to exercise whatever rights I have. I would imagine that they would claim from a compensation standpoint that it was 'extraordinary events' and that could perhaps be justified given the weather conditions (although Ryanair did land a Bournemouth flight and take those passengers home at about 21:00(ish)). I'm unsure if this claim gets them out of the 'duty of care' part, however - particularly the refusal to give us anything to drink or a phone call when they cut us loose. We've kept all receipts for taxis and hotel.

As a result any advice would be hugely appreciated before I start to correspond with Ryanair directly :-)

Thanks all

Ian

Hi Ian - I was on the flight too. I am just starting to go through what we can and can't claim for as any claims must be made within 7 working days. I can certainly give you my email and show you what correspondence I will be sending - two heads being better than one and all that!! I have also since found out that Bristol won't accept incoming planes after 2am - therefore by 10.00pm we should have been told it was cancelled - also before the pilot even arrived he would have known he would run out of flying time. Passengers could have been advised by 10pm! My husband was due to pick us up and he knew it was cancelled by 10.30pm. Debbie

debbiedevon

Thank you Cityboy. I have taken your advice and registered with them. Many thanks - Debbie

iansthomas

Hi Cityboy and Debbie - thanks for your responses.

I'm going to write up my letter to Ryanair this morning and am trying to get the balance right between being concise and factual - as Cityboy says - and actually making sure the extent of the poor service is clear! I'm tempted to just state that I'm claiming against the regulation and leave the circumstances out for later letters (as I'm sure there will be :-()

I'll also try posting my original question to flightmole and see what response I get there as well :-)

Debbie - am happy to swap letters once I work out how to send you my email address in a private message! If you already know and want to send me your email address then that would be great.

Thanks again

Ian

PolishBigSpender

Hmm. Is it just me that gets the feeling that Cityboy is using this forum to advertise his own forum?

amf

PolishBigSpender wrote: »

Hmm. Is it just me that gets the feeling that Cityboy is using this forum to advertise his own forum?

Hmm. Is it just me that gets the feeling that PBS is really Michael O'Leary?