STA TRAVEL, EMIRATES, CAA, ATOL, ABTA, NATIONWIDE, no-one will help us get our £2892 back.

JamesPeter

Sorry to say but having been in a very similar situation 12 months ago when a different travel agency went into liquidation, you are in a very weak position.

Your contract is with the (now defunct) STA Travel.

The fact you have a 000- plated voucher shows the airline ticket(s) have not been issued, or for that matter paid for by STA to Emirates. Emirates will have your details from the PNR (Passenger Named Record) but will have not ticketed you for the flights. Therefore they have no legal obligation to you.

You are basically an unsecured creditor of STA Travel and you will need to lodge a claim with the Insolvency practitioners dealing with STA Travel.

The ATOL symbol on STA’s paperwork is a ‘red herring’. It only applies if you booked a package (flights plus hotel or hire car etc on the same booking reference) and you would have received an ATOL certificate if this were the case, to show that your holiday was a ‘package’ covered by the CAA ATOL scheme.

Normally in cases like yours, your Travel Insurance would be your port of call, providing you were covered for failure of the agents (STA Travel).

Or, if you had paid by credit card, Sect75 cover may have applied, but as you have found, chargeback (which is not an official scheme, basically just a trade agreement) only gives 120 days right to ‘chargeback’ the offending purchase.

Yes, your situation is awful (and having been there taught me some invaluable lessons) – i.e., always book ‘flight only’ itineraries direct with the airline (not via an agency), always pay by credit card and always take out travel insurance immediately on booking the flights (making sure the coverage covers failure of suppliers - airlines and agents). A bit belt and braces? Yes, definitely. But better safe than sorry.  

The fact someone else booked at a similar time/place is also irrelevant. You can only claim in relation to your own situation, not that of others. They had 176- plated tickets which were ticketed by Emirates. You have a 000 un-plated voucher. (The word ‘plated’ goes back to the days where airlines issued agents with a metal embossing plate to validate tickets. This is no longer the case in this day of e-vouchers etc).

As I posted above, you need to lodge a claim with STA’s liquidators who are:

James Douglas Ernle Money (IP No. 8999) and Steven Edward Butt (IP No. 9108) both of Rollings Butt LLP, 6 Snow Hill, London, EC1A 2AY

https://www.thegazette.co.uk/notice/3650461

To be honest, you may be throwing away more money, using a solicitor to claim from STA’s liquidators. The process is easy if you contact the liquidators directly. However, how much you may ultimately get back from them depends entirely on the assets and liabilities of STA travel when they ceased trading. Sadly, being an unsecured creditor means you are at the back of a probably long queue.

AnnaPendleton

JamesPeter, thank you so much for taking the time to explain this to me. I really appreciate it. I lodged a claim with the liquidators as soon as they were appointed. Fingers crossed something comes from it. 

Alan_Bowen

I am afraid nothing will come from the liquidators, the debts exceed the assets according to the documents filed at Companies House by some £29 million, so that is a completely dead horse. Phone the Citizens Advice Bureau, I still think the claim is against the airline and normally the CAB has friendly solicitors, not at the end of the phone 24/7, who will offer free advice. The fact it was issued under ref 000 rather than the airline's usually three-digit number is directly as a result of Emirates giving STA a deal that not another agent in the UK had but you shouldn't be worse off as a result

isplumm

AnnaPendleton said:

JamesPeter, thank you so much for taking the time to explain this to me. I really appreciate it. I lodged a claim with the liquidators as soon as they were appointed. Fingers crossed something comes from it. 

Do you have access to solictors via your house insurance?