Monarch Flight ZB286 Gatwick to Tenerife 23rd August 2013

Emsden · 16 October 2013 at 2:57PM

We were delayed for 22 hours at Gatwick airport on 23 August after a fellow passenger, described by the captain as a 'very observant passenger' spotted just before take off that the cabin window next to her seat was cracked (blimey, thank goodness for observant passengers!). She mentioned it to a cabin steward and it was escalated until it was decided we needed to disembark for repairs. There followed a shambolic 22 hours while Monarch gave us no info on our rights or choices, barely looked after us and were generally in hiding. To add insult to injury when we finally got on a plane the next day it was delayed by another 2 hours as our baggage had been loaded onto the wrong plane - Monarch's fault again as both planes had the same flight number and the ground staff were as confused as we were.

Monarch have refused our claim as they say that a broken window is EC but I think they are wrong because:

noone knows how long the window had been broken for
if Monarch had undertaken even the most rudimentary aircraft checks following the previous flight then they would have spotted this earlier and could have initiated repairs earlier
how extraordinary is it that a window gets damaged? It can't be that rare. Shouldn't airlines keep spare window panes at airports for incidents like this?
Monarch did not take reasonable steps to keep the delays to a minimum

I'd be grateful for any thoughts on this one.
Thanks