Missed flight due to departure gate not being announced.

born_again

My point - in case you missed it - was that if 

all

 boards had gone down, I would have expected there to be frequent verbal announcements regarding flights and their gate numbers.

👍

As well as thousands of people missing their flights. Which you would fully expect to have made main stream news outlets.

It would seem clear that many people got up & went to find out what was going on, & made their flights. Not pointing finger of blame at anyone. Just pointing out the obvious.

eskbanker

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81942770#Comment_81942770

I wasn't addressing your point about verbal announcements but instead your (separate) assertion that OP was "sat in Departures taking photos of newly shown departure information at 17:42 (as the OP's photo up-thread shows)".

Pollycat

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81943003#Comment_81943003

Maybe you would like to address my point about verbal announcements….

And regarding your point:

"In terms of the amount of time available to OP, the lengthy journey times to reach some remote STN gates already eats substantially into any contingency, and since Ryanair closes gates 30 minutes before departure, passengers would have needed to have been through the gate by 17:10, so there'd certainly be a need to be on top of the situation very promptly after 16:40…"

that just shows how important it is to be proactive.

Maybe the OP isn't a very seasoned traveller and that's why the group missed their flight.

eskbanker

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81943335#Comment_81943335

Not sure there's anything to say about verbal announcements - OP hasn't said whether any were made (but implicitly they didn't hear any), so it would just be speculation.

RefluentBeans

I can see why OP hasn’t responded in a while folks. OP came looking for advice; and received very little, and a lot of sarcasm and criticism.

As others have said - it isn’t fair to assign 100% blame to either party, but Stansted’s electronic information boards went down; seemingly in a pretty severe way (and when it did recover didn’t automatically update which could be any of a multitude of issues). Let’s be fair here - in this situation the stress someone would be feeling is incredibly high and so it’s hard to predict what people would do.

OP if you are still reading - I would definitely follow through with the complaint, and it’s worth a punt with the insurance. I hope you manage to get some money back!

MyRealNameToo

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81943876#Comment_81943876

Guess you arent reading either? They already spoke to their insurers who said it's not an insured peril, as expected.

Mamitch

I received a "Without prejudice" email from Stansted Airport this morning. It states

"We are committed to ensuring that affected customers are reimbursed for any financial losses incurred as a direct consequence of this incident. To that extent, please itemise the costs you have incurred and provide documentary evidence for each item of claim."

So I've submitted the invoice for the whole group, together with confirmation from the travel agent and hotel that we did not arrive, so fingers crossed!

Out of interest, there were 1852 complaints registered between mine and the last of our group to register. They may not all relate to the same problem, but worth noting.

In answer to an earlier query, yes they were starting to announce the departures just before the boards crashed but ours was not called.

I will keep you posted.

eskbanker

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81944615#Comment_81944615

That sounds promising, in that (albeit without prejudice) they clearly appear to be accepting liability for "any financial losses incurred as a direct consequence of this incident", although whether they actually put their money where their mouth is remains to be seen!

bazdvd

well at least all the people here making assumptions about it being your fault will now now it was not an isolated incident and many more people were affected.

lincroft1710

Er,

"We are committed to ensuring that affected customers are reimbursed for any financial losses incurred as a direct consequence of this incident. To that extent, please itemise the costs you have incurred and provide documentary evidence for each item of claim."

this reads as if they are only going to compensate for extra expenditure incurred, rather than just missing the flight and subsequent holiday. So if OP had successfully found another flight and arrived at his intended destination, he could have claimed for the cost of that flight.