pot hole on motorway caused a missed flight

Dean000000

Dean000000 wrote: »

in terms of contracts - you had a contract to be at the airport at a certain time, which you failed upon....


unless you had a contract with any party to get you to the airport at a certain time, you have no claim..


Thats why tour operators generally get you to the airport way too early.... as they have a commitment to get you there on time.


unless your taxi (or transfer) was booked on the basis of 'get me somewhere at x time' its kinda your own fault really...

Hi Etienneg, you mean like explained back here?

lesta1980

etienneg wrote: »

Many of the arguments here are irrelevant, whoever is right.

At the end of the day, it's no good just thinking that 'someone' else was to blame. In order to get money to compensate you, you would need to establish exactly who was to blame, and that there is an actionable case against them (that they breached a contract or that they owed you a duty of care, etc.), and that you can prove that case on the balance of probabilities. Can you do all of these things? If not, forget it.

Things happen in life that are someone else's fault but there's no actionable case in law. These are things for which we need insurance.

As an example, suppose you go to bed leaving your car parked outside. When you get up it is damaged. There are no witnesses to say who did the damage. There is therefore no actionable case. It's quite irrelevant that someone else was to blame. If you have comprehensive insurance cover on the car you will get compensation, less any excess. Otherwise, you lose out totally.

In this case, you had insurance cover up to £500 and I expect you will get that amount reimbursed. But beyond that, who do you expect to pay you, and why?

hello and a good post. all i will say is that if the motorway recovery people say they know exactly what has happened due to the state of the carridge way due to the road works then surely that is their fault, what with 3-4 people having the same thing within a sort time frame?

etienneg

Well, I'm trying to be practical. The opinion of the motorway recovery people (even if you know who they are) is just that - their opinion. It is not evidence. Photos of the pothole and of where is was could be evidence, but I doubt you have this sort of thing. Neither (I suspect) do you have contact details for the 3-4 people who had a similar problem within a short time frame, so anything they could have contributed by way of evidence isn't available to you.

You may (or may not) be right in your belief that it was the fault of the contractors working on the road. Nobody here can say either way. But can you prove it, by evidence? A court can only go on evidence, not belief or opinion.

It's difficult to accept, I know, but even if you did somehow know yourself with certainty, that's no good. You have to be able to prove it to a court - and that's quite another matter.

EveryWhere

lesta1980 wrote: »

she looked at arriving 3 or just over hours before. let me guess, she needed 3 weeks

Whilst you can make flippant statements here, I would caution you to not make them to whom you intend to claim. Unless of course, you have proof that the taxi was booked for five hours before the flight, allowing perhaps a couple of hours for the journey.
If in addition, you can show phone records of calls to the new taxi firm or the current taxi firm can show that they tried to get a new taxi out for you, this will help your case.

Tigsteroonie

lesta1980 wrote: »

As if I'd start this thread if she'd tried getting there with 4 minutes to spare!

You'd be surprised. We do have new posters on MSE who'd start exactly such a thread, unable to see how they've contributed to the problem themselves.

photome

EveryWhere wrote: »

Whilst you can make flippant statements here, I would caution you to not make them to whom you intend to claim. Unless of course, you have proof that the taxi was booked for five hours before the flight, allowing perhaps a couple of hours for the journey.
If in addition, you can show phone records of calls to the new taxi firm or the current taxi firm can show that they tried to get a new taxi out for you, this will help your case.

Thats what I was trying to say but I gave up, the OP clearly knows his wife left in plenty of time despite not being able to say so on here ,I think he also said he doesnt know the exact timings, which as you say he will need to know.

koalakoala

All you can do is take the £500

agrinnall

Was she desperate to get to St Lucia in order to see the cricket? If not then perhaps a better option would have been to fly to another island, spend a few days there relaxing, then meet up with you on St Lucia once all the cricket fans had moved on.

bsms1147

lesta1980 wrote: »

first point, mitigated loses - you and everyone else seems to miss, there was no other flight options. yes maybe a week later, or even a few days later, but what do you do? lose 3-4 days holiday that is already paid for? stay at Gatwick for those days and pay for hotels - food etc?

Probably would have cost less than £3500..

shaun_from_Africa

Westin wrote: »

Whilst UVF and perhaps other Caribbean flights may have been busy because of the cricket, I am surprised other routings were not looked at. For example BA over to JFK or MCO or TPA or FFL then a connecting flight onto UVF.

It might not have been as simple as that.
I fly out to Trinidad on a very regular basis on the same flight that the OP's wife missed (it goes to St Lucia then on to Trinidad) and when I have had to get flights to Trinidad on short notice, it is often almost impossible to do.
Getting to Miami or JFK is easy enough but the flights from there to the Caribbean are often fully booked a long time in advance and even trying to get there by doing a bit of island hopping doesn't always work.