Flight cancelled day before, then reinstated

brainiack

Morning all,

Today I was due to be on a Wizzair flight to a European destination, departing a UK airport.

Yesterday, Wizzair emailed me to state that the flight was cancelled (no reason provided). I was offered 3 options, refund, wizzair 'credit' or rebooking. I opted for a refund as the dates did not work to rebook due work commitments/leave etc. Refund request appears to have been processed via Wizzair website, and now awaiting funds.

However, around 6-7pm I checked the airport website and several other resources including Wizzair's own website, and the flight was listed as operating again!! This was further confirmed this morning, the flight departed, with the same flight number and all other details.

I am absolutely furious that Wizzair appear to be playing games here, despite the refund, as clearly a reversal of the cancellation was made but never communicated to me! I now have the difficulty of a potential tricky insurance claim for my hotel and other costs due to this, as the insurer may well check the flight and see it did in fact operate...

Where do I stand with this? Whilst I expect my full refund as per legislation etc, in my eyes Wizzair is playing a dodgy game here and I want to report them to the CAA and take things further including legal action for my additional costs, and even compensation as clearly there has been some misleading communication and actions on their part. If a flight is cancelled, then surely that is final. I'm curious as to how any passengers managed to still make it on the flight this morning, and whether this was part of Wizzair's game for example perhaps the flight was overbooked and an easier way to handle the situation was to create the pretext of a 'cancellation' to remove some passengers to within capacity.

Very interested in thoughts, and whether this is commonplace. I have a mountain of evidence ready to go to prove the flight operated this morning.

Westin

Flight number and routing?

brainiack

W95793 LGW-CTA

Westin

There is an Italian airport ground handling strike today which has meant many flights have been cancelled.  Easyjet for example have 9 cancellations from LGW today to Italy, including a CTA one.

Vueling and WizzAir also have cancellations for Italy but the only Wizz one I can see cancelled today is W4 5785 LGW MXP.

W9 5793 shows as departed from gate 92 and off a remote gate (135).  Gate opened at 08:01, closed at 08:40 and aircraft pushed back at 09:02.    

I wonder if it was positioning to CTA empty because of ground handling issues at CTA airport.

brainiack

The data suggests there were passengers on board, gate was opened and check-in, and if it was a positioning flight then the airline usually uses a different flight number. My insurer may check the flight details and see that it departed with the same flight number, time etc and therefore my hotel costs are lost, in which case Wizzair will be liable. 

Is it common airlines do this? It's the only flight all day I've seen to appear cancelled then get reinstated.

Caz3121

From media reports the planned strike for today was postponed to a later date yesterday. I would expect they reinstated the flight after it was known strike no longer going ahead