What if Tour Operator Changed Airline?

Sigurd44

I'm afraid the advice does not properly cover my case - at least not explicitly. We Booked a holiday to Crete with Olympic flying from Birmingham to Heraklion in May 2011. The carrier was supposed to be Monarch, but Monarch or Olympic changed the outward carrier to Sky Wings (delayed for 1 hour), and the return flight to Balkan Airlines (who however identified themselves as Tour Air). The return flight arrived in Birmingham over 7 hours late. I wrote to Olympic immediately after our return to claim under 261/2004, but they simply said that my comments were noted but they were unable to offer any assistance. I took my complaint to the CAA but Olympic were still not forthcoming. I am not sure if Monarch were responsible for the sub-contracting, but I told Olympic my contract was with them. Should I go after Monarch (who were notorious for this subcontracting to East European airlines).

Alan_Bowen

You can only claim against the actual airline, not the tour operator. Monarch had a huge falling out with Olympic Holidays and cancelled the season's flying for them, in fact the operator is in court at the moment suing Monarch for £11M which they claim to have been overcharged.

Are you sure the return carrier was not Tor Air which Olympic were using in 2011, they were certainly flying from Crete and one of their aircraft, an airbus according to Wikipedia was operated for Tor Air by BH Air which might be your Balkan link, they were Swedish (allegedly) but run by the same people as Viking and possibly XL? The bad news if it was Tor is that they ceased operations in December 2011 and you would have no claim at all. See if you can find your boarding passes or look at flightstats.com for the day of travel and see if you can find the flight number

glentoran99

Sigurd44 wrote: »

I'm afraid the advice does not properly cover my case - at least not explicitly. We Booked a holiday to Crete with Olympic flying from Birmingham to Heraklion in May 2011. The carrier was supposed to be Monarch, but Monarch or Olympic changed the outward carrier to Sky Wings (delayed for 1 hour), and the return flight to Balkan Airlines (who however identified themselves as Tour Air). The return flight arrived in Birmingham over 7 hours late. I wrote to Olympic immediately after our return to claim under 261/2004, but they simply said that my comments were noted but they were unable to offer any assistance. I took my complaint to the CAA but Olympic were still not forthcoming. I am not sure if Monarch were responsible for the sub-contracting, but I told Olympic my contract was with them. Should I go after Monarch (who were notorious for this subcontracting to East European airlines).

balkan airlines is who your claim should be with surely?

Caz3121

glentoran99 wrote: »

balkan airlines is who your claim should be with surely?

Balkan Airlines went bust in 2002. Tor Air would have been the operating carrier who are also out of business. As per my response to the OP yesterday when they posted the same question...there is no-one to claim from