Departure airport changed on the day plus delay

Rhianlb

My partner and I booked our holiday this year with Olympic...yes I know, huge mistake...we should have reviewed them first! I have since learnt of their appalling reputation. The issues below are captions from a complaint letter i sent to them in August:

Change of flight times within 1 week of departure
A slip of paper was received on 28th June stating an operational change was being made to our flight schedule resulting in revised departure and arrival times, no change was mentioned with regard to the airport location for departure.

Change of flight departure location within 12 hours of flight
Upon arrival at Birmingham airport on 5th July there were no check-in details on the departure board, when we located customer services we were advised that we would now be flying from Manchester rather than Birmingham and would be collected by coach within 40 minutes. We were advised that the flight had never been scheduled from Birmingham.

Due to this transfer our flight which was scheduled for 11.30 from Birmingham actually departed around 16:00 from Manchester.

My letter also detailed a catalogue of other issues encountered during this holiday. Last week i received a response to this letter, it only responded to my complaint around the change of flights and states that 'chartered flights are subject to alteration' and advises to check the holiday information brochure "your flights" section.

After quite a lot of google searching i'm not finding any information relating to the rights of the consumer if the departure airport is changed, i am however getting a lot of results about delays over 3 hours. My quandary is that I don't know how to proceed...does anyone know what my rights really are please?

I'm loathed to let Olympic get away with this.

Alan_Bowen

But who was the operating airline? Small Planet I suspect, good luck in getting a penny from them.

I would be tempted in this case to take action against Olympic, not under EU261 as they are not subject to the law, but for major changes to the package in breach of the ABTA's Code of Conduct. I suggest you look at using ABTA Arbitration against the operator, they are the ones who decided to cancel your flight from Birmingham, indeed they may have been selling a non existent flight in the first place. Only if the airline you flew is a decent one is there any point in demanding compensation and their response may well be, the flight from Manchester is exactly what we were contracted to operate in the first place!