Compensation for delayed flights Discussion Area

Vern58

Thanks Richard. The flight has a status of 'unknown', which I guess is not very helpful!

Do you folks think I would be wise to email Thomson as a first port of call, and to record my unhappiness and see what they offer me, and then proceed to sending a letter requesting compensation if I'm not happy with their reply?

richardw

Was the flight number different on 5th Dec, or the same?

Cityboy may be back soon with his interpretation, so wait a mo.

HXDave

If i recall correctly, flightstats website does not cover charter flights, only scheduled flights (however, as i say - i may be wrong).

However, as it seemed to be a charter flight, i would imagine it was delayed, as opposed to cancelled.

HXDave

Vern58

richardw wrote: »

Was the flight number different on 5th Dec, or the same?

The flight number was the same on the 5th Dec as the 6th.

Flightstats do provide information on this flight, though I couldn't say for certain whether it's a charter flight or not.

HXDave

Vern58, flying into Sanford will more likely be a charter (Holiday) flight as opposed to a scheduled flight.

Vern58

Thanks again Cityboy. Yes it was definitely a package as it was one single price with 'free' car hire.

I shall go with the snail mail then and send recorded delivery.

Cheers.

Roger_Breaker

Hi all. I've been snouting around on here for a while now, but this is my first post! It's a great forum.

My particular problem began on 04/12/10. We had booked a week in Lanzarote with lowcostholidays.com, including flights with Ryanair. I've booked with lowcostholidays & flown with Ryanair before seperately several times before, and have had no problems with either.

There are four of us, myself and my partner and my stepchildren aged 8 & 11 (the 11yr old being an insulin dependant Type 1 diabetic). On Saturday 4th December we were due to fly home to Stansted, and upon checking out of our hotel we were told that no flights were leaving because of the Spanish ATC 'wildcat' strikes. This was the first we'd heard of the strikes, and i'd already checked the status of the inbound flight which was said to be delayed by 2 hours. We then checked Ryanairs website which had a list of the cancelled flights, and ours wasnt one of them, so we decided we should get the 22euro taxi to the airport. We were about to get into one that'd just pulled up outside, when a family that had been staying at our hotel got out of it with their cases, and informed us that NOTHING was flying, and that their flight wasn't on the list either. Apparently the airport was complete mayhem, and Ryanair just gave them a piece of paper outlining their 'rights' (which they gave us a copy of) and advised them to go back to their hotel.
At this point i decided to call Ryanair to confirm the cancellation (involving a 15miute wait on a mobile, which i've yet to receive the bill for :-$), but they still wouldn't confirm it. Finally our flight came up on their website as cancelled. I then called lowcost to enquire as to what to do next regarding accommodatin etc, and they basically didn't want to know and told me to contact my insurer and Ryanair. I did this next, only to discover that it was classed as a homebound cancellation/delay which wasn't included in our cover.
By this time people had started to get other flights booked, so we got back onto the Ryanair site and tried to book the next flight (3 days later on Tues 7th), but this was now fully booked. It hadn't been an hour or so before so now we began to panic. The next Ryanair flight was Thurs 16th, so we looked for the next Thomas Cook/Thomson flights, all of which were fully booked until Thursday, so finally booked with Ryanair for Thursday 16th before they sold out too (at this point nobody knew how long this strike was going to go on for!).
Luckily there was still space at the hotel so we checked back in again, provisionally until Thursday, the same basis as we were for our original holiday (All Inclusive, which at about £26 per person per day we thought would be the best option, and easier to keep track of if we could subsequently make a claim).
By this time (13:40, we were due to fly at 12:20) i had received an email from Ryanair on my phone confirming the cancellation, and advising that we could get a refund or rebook for free. I tried to call them again to tie-up our new Ref. No. with our original booking, but there was now a 45 minute wait, so i decided to save that for another time! We decided to get our cases back to the room before something went missing, and chatted with various others who had been stranded, four of which had gone back to their hotel to be told it was full, and ended up staying at ours.
Next morning after breakfast we were then about to check the Ryanair website when i got a text message from home saying that it had been on the UK news that Ryanair had laid-on extra flights. Where was our email??! Upon checking the website we discovered there were 3 extra flights from Lanzarote, one of which was to Stansted, leaving at 12. ...it was then after 10.45, and we'd got to re-pack and make a 25 min taxi journey!! I tried to book online, and Stansted wasn't full but wouldn't let us book, but the other two were full. After trying to get hold of Ryanair by phone (yet another 45min wait so abandoned that), and figuring that we'd certainly now miss the flight and probably not get back into the hotel, along with wasting 45euro on the return taxi fare, we decided to stay-put and hope that these flights would free-up space on the Tuesday flight. They didn't! Nobody from our hotel had heard anything about the extra flights.

We hired a car on the Monday and took a trip to the airport to check again availability for Tues (1 seat only) and sort our new booking out, which they did for us. Now this was sorted we could finally try to kick back and actually make the most of being stranded! (Never quite like the rest of the holiday though, is it?!)

Thursday 9th December finally came, we checked-in for our flight and went through security. As the boarding time approached we still didn't have a gate number. In fact, nobody did? Next thing we know, 3 Ryanair flights along with around another 4 or so others got diverted to Fuerteventura due to high winds/weather!! Ryanair 'cancelled' their flights, got us all to go downstairs to get our cases and then back upstairs to their desk for a refund/rebooking!! We were (luckily?) pulled to the front end of a very long queue as it was our second cancelled flight (along with many, many others stuck there, some from Friday 3rd!) and were eventually offered Stansted via Madrid the next day, Stansted direct two days later, or Luton departing 18:25 the same day. We took the Luton as we were getting low on medication for our eldest's diabetes, and really just wanted to be getting back now. As time went on we wondered if this flight was going to be able to get in to the airport, as flight after flight was being cancelled/diverted, but as the afternoon went along they slowly began to land. We eventually departed at around 21:45. The pilot announced that he hoped we'd been given all the info about the delay, i.e. "weather and operational issues" (we hadn't heard about any 'operational issues') and that he'd explain fully when we got up in the air. We never heard another word from him until we landed, when he held everyone on the plane (including those that should've been at Luton) while he waited to hear about our transport to Stansted. After another 10 minutes and no further information, we were unsuprisingly asked to disembark and that was that! We got our bags, booked ourselves on a £37.50 bus to Stansted (rather than a £100 taxi), collected our car from Holiday Inn (involving another £90 bill for extra parking), and arrived home at 06:30 on Friday 10th, about 5 1/2 days later than originally planned!

Now, apologies for the MASSIVE post, but that's pretty much everything that happened (you don't need to know about toilet breaks, do you? ;-) )
As far as i can see (apart from the MAJOR oversight of not informing cancelled passengers of Sundays' extra flights) Ryanair has done pretty much all it has to, Lowcostholidays has done nothing other than give us a phone number for Ryanair and tell us to contact our insurance company (cheers then!). Is it worth trying for a claim with either of them? We've figured that we're about £1300 out of pocket with lost wages, accomodation, food & drink at the airport all day Thursday, extra car parking, and whatever our phone bills are going to be (i daren't look yet!), and like most people we can ill-afford to write this money off on a holiday we neither booked nor wanted.

Thanks so much for bearing with the story, and i'd very much appreciate any help on the matter.

Cheers, RB.

richardw

Gosh, what a nightmare!

Ryanair may advance a defence of extraordinary circumstances for the cancellations due to the strike and weather.

Looks like you may have a claim for right to care expenses from Ryanair.

Perhaps also have a good read of your travel insurance policy.

Voyager2002

richardw wrote: »

Gosh, what a nightmare!

Ryanair may advance a defence of extraordinary circumstances for the cancellations due to the strike and weather.

Looks like you may have a claim for right to care expenses from Ryanair.

Perhaps also have a good read of your travel insurance policy.

I agree.

The circumstances were indeed extraordinary, so I don't think Ryanair are obliged to profide compensation. However, they most certainly are obliged to provide "care" during the delay, to cover hotel costs, food (but not alcoholic drinks), telephone calls and so forth, as well as the bus from Luton to Stansted.

One possible problem: the regulations make it very clear that passengers are obliged to go to the airport and check in for their flights, even if they know that the flight has been cancelled. The fact that you did not do so could mean that Ryanair are able to avoid paying you anything. So you might prefer not to mention this detail to them in any further correspondence.

Anyway, the next step is a polite letter to their customer service people in Ireland, giving details of your necessary expenses during the delay and copies of receipts.

Roger_Breaker

Thank you all so much for your replies, i have much more of an idea which direction to head in now!

I'll be honest, the 'not turning up at the airport' scenario was worrying me a great deal at the time, although we had already checked in and printed boarding passes before we left the UK. Once we'd had the first cancellation confirmed i just saw paying out for a taxi as throwing good money after bad. Also, the family that we met getting out of the taxi having been to the airport assured me that they had nothing to actually prove that they'd been, just the standard form, of which they gave us a copy.
Thanks for clearing that up Cityboy.

To be honest i feel bad claiming from anybody, as neither flight cancellations were actually anyones fault (other than the Spanish ATC's, and i don't see us getting anything out of them!), but i guess i'm best just keeping that opinion to myself and getting on with it!
Although having said that, a further email from Ryanair on Saturday to inform us of Sunday's flights would've actually saved the whole situation, i don't think i'd've even bothered claiming for one extra night away.

I shall go over my insurance policy again, get in touch with Ryanair and let you know if and when anything comes of it, thanks again so much to you all for your comments, and Merry Christmas!

RB