TUI flight query

mcphail

Good morning,
I hope I’m worrying unnecessarily - but can anyone tell me how I can check if a Summer flight has been cancelled?

I have booked a holiday from Aberdeen to Majorca in August, and when I went to look to see if there was any availability as someone wanted to join us, I could see that there were no flight on a Monday at any time thought the Summer, flying Aberdeen to Majorca.  There are flights on a Tuesday, Wednesday and Saturday, but nothing any Monday.  I have a Monday flight Tom 1182, but when I phoned TUI, they said there was nothing on file to say the flight was cancelled, and it was probably fully booked - in fact every flight on a Monday was fully booked, hence why they are not showing.  I find it a bit hard to believe, and am worried I will get an e mail in a few months to say it’s been cancelled, and will then be too late to get the accommodation that we want, and alternative flights from Aberdeen could be sold out.

At the moment, I could get the Tuesday flight, and hotel that we want, but can’t cancel our original booking, as the Monday flight has not been cancelled.

thank you for reading, and any advice welcome x 

Caz3121

Often before flights are officially cancelled the airline will stop selling them. Your flight is in summer schedule which commences end march and around now is when slots will be getting agreed and confirmed. It sounds like they do not currently have a confirmed Monday slot although may well still be working on it.

Westin

I sadly think your concerns about this are right.

TUI do not seem to be operating ABZ PMI on a Monday in 2022 (they are in 2023). This year as you have found only x3 weekly.

As their focus will be to deal with travel changes for customers departing sooner than August, I would be inclined to determine what resolution you would like (The Tue/Wed or Sat flight, or a Monday flight from another UK airport if there is one) - then call and challenge them again.  It sounds like possibly you just got through first time to a lazy call handler who only looked at their computer monitor. If they called their aviation or programme administration team I think they would easily discover the status of the Monday flight.

If you booked in store visit them to have it resolved.  If you booked yourself online then unfortunately you are tied to calling them again.

Well done for picking this up and spotting the potential problem early.

bagand96

I agree with the posters above that you're caught in the limbo between one department in TUI deciding to pull the Monday flight, and another department getting round to notifying existing bookings and sorting out their options.  Under normal circumstances this would usually happen in a timely manner but with the ongoing Covid-19 issues the schedules are still changing regularly and as @Westin says your booking in the summer is probably some way down the queue to be resolved.

All you can do is get back in touch with them and push to see if they'll allow a move now as you know the flight isn't happening.  The front-line customer service agents are unlikely to be able to do it so it might need escalating.

mcphail

Thanks everyone for your help and comments.
Tried phoning again today, but didn’t get any further, as it’s not showing up as cancelled, so would have to pay to change the booking, and loose our deposit if we cancelled.  

I guess I’ll have to wait until I see if they cancel, and then hope the rooms we want are still available,  but I somehow doubt it, as there are only showing 3 left at the moment.
thanks again x 

Westin

Mistake to call at a weekend. Only sale staff typically working.

Call during office hours. Ask them to check with their aviation or programme administration team. Suggest you suspect the Monday flight is not operating and ask to be changed to your preferred alternative.

If you don’t wish to call try contact via Twitter.

CKhalvashi

It may be that suitable slots haven't been found yet (this is a constant problem at Level 3 airports, of which LEPA/PMI is one) and there may be a wait for availability at this time, especially as you're looking at highly seasonal dates (many additional flights and larger aircraft are scheduled for 8 weeks from mid-July to the first week of September).

You may not know until May, but definitely as Westin states, it's worth contacting Tui during office hours where someone may be able to explain more.