A power cut delayed our flight – can we still claim?
Q We were booked on a package holiday in May with Lastminute.com to Mallorca, flying from Manchester airport to Palma with Ryanair. There was a power cut at Terminal 3, which caused a delay in refuelling. Eventually the plane moved to a different terminal to refuel.
The whole performance took so long that the crew couldn't fly us as they would have been over their legal working hours. A new plane and crew was found, but we eventually took off at 2.30am, about six hours late. Ryanair are saying it's the responsibility of Lastminute, and vice versa. How can we get compensation?
Katy L
A Sorry to hear about this dismal sequence of events. I imagine that instead of arriving at your hotel by around midnight, you reached it at dawn. In terms of strict liability: Ryanair should have provided a meal while you were waiting to depart. If for some reason vouchers weren't provided, and you had to fork out, then if you have an itemised receipt you will be able to claim from the airline.
After that, though, I am afraid that your entitlement is rather more opaque. Under air passengers' rights rules, you would be entitled to £350 in delay compensation if you can demonstrate the problem was of Ryanair's making. But the initial trigger for the delay appears squarely to reside with the airport's inability to sustain the power (albeit to a far smaller extent than Heathrow in March).
What happened thereafter can be traced back to the original issue. A lawyer might mount the following argument: that the first flight crew could have flown to Mallorca within their legal hours; the fact that the plane would have had to spend the night at Palma, with the return flight heavily delayed, is irrelevant.
But Ryanair would riposte that finding a new aircraft and crew was an example of excellent resourcing, and the solution that caused the least possible delay for passengers as a whole. I sympathise with that argument, and I think a judge might do the same. So I reluctantly suggest you put it down to experience. You might also consider a claim against Lastminute.com for the loss of a night of your holiday, but I fear that might prove a waste of effort too.
Q I am booking Eurostar from London to Brussels at the end of July for the family: two adults and two children, aged 15 and 13. We'll be staying for three nights in total. Is it best to stay in Brussels or in Bruges, Ghent or Antwerp? The kids want to visit Paris for the day, too.
Debra S
A On the Belgian options: please cross Bruges off your list right away. While it offers top-grade culture packed into a superbly preserved medieval city, your teenagers would rightly point out that the Unesco-listed historic centre is full of older tourists and offers little for people of their age.
Ghent is livelier and only half an hour by train from Brussels. You might all enjoy a spin on a bike around one of the two excellent velodromes. Antwerp, an hour from the Belgian capital, has still more to offer. Illusion Antwerpen is a particularly fun collection of illusions (upside-down rooms, weird mirrors – that sort of thing). Chocolate Nation, claimed to be the 'largest chocolate museum in the world', is an excellent counterpart to the Flemish frites-with-everything cuisine.
I recommend Antwerp as a day-trip from Brussels, rather than a place to stay. The capital itself is richly rewarding for families. The city centre is eminently walkable, with an implausibly high density of excellent places to eat. The Comic Art Museum celebrates the Belgian comic strip tradition. The splendid Atomium, outside the city centre, is a 1958 version of what the future will look like. In the impressive Parc du Cinquantenaire, Autoworld Brussels is an amusingly retro car museum.
Finally, if you want to combine Brussels and Paris, the sensible way to do it is an 'open-jaw' itinerary. Take the Eurostar train out to Belgium and stay a couple of nights. Then catch another Eurostar (the continental version, formerly known as Thalys) to Paris in around 90 minutes for an overnight stay. Return next day to London on the direct Eurostar. But personally, I'd stay in Belgium every time.
Q I made an error booking a flight with a Greek airline, Sky Express. I realised my mistake immediately and tried to cancel without penalty, but got nowhere. Should I be able to cancel within 24 hours?
Kaz T
A Having made a few online errors when booking flights, I sympathise. I now try to ensure that someone is looking over my shoulder while I buy, double-checking my every move. If that isn't possible, I read out loud the reservation details to myself to try to ensure the trip is exactly what I intended. (When booking through a human travel agent, they should ensure I get what I need.)
Travel vendors are generally unforgiving about online booking errors. If you book through an online travel agent, any subsequent changes are likely to be extremely expensive once you click to pay. Even booking directly with an airline, the default is that you get no leeway to change or cancel your booking free of charge. If you need to cancel a Sky Express booking because you have inadvertently booked something completely unsuitable, the airline says 'only airport taxes are refunded'. It does, though, allow changes for €35 (£30) plus any increase in fare compared with the original ticket.
The best free cooling-off opportunity is provided by British Airways. If you book a BA flight direct, you can cancel for a full refund within 24 hours of purchase. This offers the chance of saving money, incidentally; sometimes you may find the fare has fallen overnight; if this happens and you are still within the 24-hour window, cancel and rebook at the lower price.
The two largest low-cost airlines, easyJet and Ryanair, have slightly different policies. EasyJet allows cancellations within 24 hours of making the booking for a fee of £49 (if done online, £6 more for speaking to an agent).
Ryanair has a 'grace period of 24 hours from the time of your original booking to correct any minor errors you may have made' free of charge. What constitutes a 'minor error'? Dates or times of the flight (though if the new one is more expensive, you must pay the fare difference), and even booking flights in the wrong direction, eg Dublin to Manchester rather than the other way around. But these airlines are the exception rather than the rule.
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