March 24 TUI flight only booking cancelled without notification and left stranded at airport

Thrugelmir

Life__Goes__On said:

Thrugelmir said:

No hindsight required. Airlines were rescheduling flights the week before to get passengers home. Difficult to miss what was going on. 

Yes they were, but this could have gone on for another week,  it's only after the fact we know that wasn't the case.
But if you could point me to certain posts that stated the cut off date before it happened, great, otherwise it just looks like hindsight.

Spain closed it's airports on the 23rd March. Land borders having been previously closed on the 17th March. 

Life__Goes__On

Airports didn't close on the 23rd ( OP flew on the 26th)  nor like other counties close its airspace they stopped holidaymakers  entering Spain, but holiday makers still could leave.
TUI (and others) decided to leave people stranded rather than fly them home, it was a choice they made purely they didn't want to fly empty planes to collect the travellers they took.

CKhalvashi

Life__Goes__On said:

Airports didn't close on the 23rd ( OP flew on the 26th)  nor like other counties close its airspace they stopped holidaymakers  entering Spain, but holiday makers still could leave.
TUI (and others) decided to leave people stranded rather than fly them home, it was a choice they made purely they didn't want to fly empty planes to collect the travellers they took.

This is exactly why I'd argue that the EU law needs to be adapted to allow for flights to continue for a week (or even compel airlines to operate a further week) to get people positioned to where they should be in the event of a border closure.

I ended up on the sharp end of a border closure/flight cancellation in March, it was announced at 8pm that the borders were closing at midnight to all foreign arrivals, leaving absolutely no chance to get out. In OP's case, BA were still flying, in my case Belavia were the only company through a country where I was admissible at the time. My credit card decided not to work, so I too had to call a relative and ask them to pay, with me transferring the money through straight after. It happens.

My insurance reimbursed reasonably quickly afterwards, as this is what we have insurance for. OP does have insurance, right?

wesleyad

If it was anything like where we were (egypt) you had no chance of getting an earlier flight as TUI were hurriedly trying to repatriate as many people as possible. As if you could have just booked a flight during that time. We were told to just wait (and luckily our flight did leave as scheduled on the 23rd)

av1d2

I still dont understand why they let us check in and issue boarding passes.  I want to take this further but dont know how. Can anyone help?

av1d2

I had the TUI app on my phone but checked in on my laptop.