Urgent help Cancun Mexico with TUI Beryl Hurricane

[Gilmoregirly]

We need urgent advice please. We are flying to Cancun in Mexico this Thursday landing at 2 p.m. local time. It is an all inclusive package holiday from TUI. I called TUI to cancel or switch to a different location today. They refused and said that they are monitoring the situation and that if it is a concern that they will contact us tomorrow or Wednesday. Since this is a natural disaster I am not sure why they are not allowing us to cancel. Could you please help by providing any ideas what we can do?

We travel with Tui 2x per year. They are generally very responsible. Cancelled 2 of our trips - one due to fear of drought and second due potentially flight landing in tropical storm. Also we were in Cyprus when ash cloud from the Iceland volcano stalled all European flights - they kept us 5 days extra on AI at no extra cost to us. We are currently in Dominican Rep with hurricane Deryl alert/preps (with Tui again) - we now have torrential storm. All buildings are certified as hurricane shelters, staff are keeping us informed brilliantly. They have number of restaurant hurricane 'safety certified' and organisation is brilliant. Not that I would choose this intentionally but Tui will not fly you if it is not safe. They will notify you last minute - night before or morning of your flight so be ready. Mexico is already on low trajectory FOR Beryl anyway so Tui I think are doing the right thing. By Thursday it may all be over. Good luck. The people most at risk are the poorest communities. Tui when they cancel allow you to change location - you will get a call - on those occasions they often offer a few hundred pounds extra fot this change at no cost to you! We travel in general 5-6x per year and them and BA plus Virgin have been best in difficult situations.

@Dgr10 thank you ever so much for reassurance and the kind words.

@Gilmoregirly The pilots of your aircraft will not fly into the path of a hurricane. After all, not only do they have to land your flight, they also have to fly out again several hours later with departing passengers. They will not endanger the safety of their passengers or crew, and Tui won't fly people into somewhere either already badly damaged or about to be, because they'd then have to evacuate them again.

They can't update you at the moment because the hurricane doesn't know what it is going to do yet. They have a habit of changing course or speeding up/slowing down unexpectedly so nobody can exactly forecast what things are going to be like in two days' time.

We have a family member who lives on the gulf coast, he is a pilot, so we hear quite a lot about his escapades sometimes.

tui Charge £50pp to make a change. Unless you really wanted to go to Mexico I’d change. But hurricanes change path all the time and it’s got some ground to cover before Mexico. I believe tui are just starting to fly people off Jamaica and cancel holidays there atm. It’s a few days off Mexico. It’s the nature of travelling in hurricane season.

@Samm410 TUI said that our holiday in Cancun in less than 48hrs is not going to be affected and didn’t offer £50pp to change it. I would have jumped at the chance if they offered. All they did was send an email saying our holiday is not going to be affected.

I arrive same day and time as you (might be on the same flight!). TUI just told me if there was any change they’d let me know. I didn’t get any confirmation it was going ahead like you did.

from what I am reading the hurricane will hit on the early hours of Friday but it will be much weaker than it is now. I guess that means we might end up stuck indoors on the first full day.

Agree with all the comments about the airlines won’t take a risk,

With the caveat that others have expressed - that the forecast may change - ATM the forecast for Cancun itself Thu/Fri doesn’t look that bad - High chance of Thunderstorms and a decent breeze but no more than that, so I can see why TUI and other airlines are for now at least are planning normal operations.

Hi, my auntie is going Thursday too! She must be on the same flight as you. Try not to worry. And just keep checking your emails to see if tui cancel. Me an my auntie have constantly been keeping track of the hurricane! Xx

This is our first time flying to Mexico

Mexico is fabulous! People, nature, food, drinks. Enjoy!

Go to a Mayan temple or two. Amazing. People building temples while we still lived in mud huts so to speak... (Apart from Stonehenge, and the circles of stones all over UK).

Mexico is amazing, swim in a cenote and go to Xel Ha if you can.

Thank you, unfortunately with the new prediction of hurricane Beryl covers most of Cancun and can now hit earlier than predicted. We spoke with our travel insurer and they said that if the natural disaster is within 50 miles radius of our hotel we are covered. So I think we are most likely going to cancel.

I'm on a group after being in Mexico last year and they've posted that the Birmingham flight tomorrow or Thursday is delayed pending being cancelled from cancun

Stick with it! We fly on Monday & I’d definitely be nervous if I was going Thursday but they will divert the flight if they have to & it’s unsafe or cancel/ delay your trip if it’s not feasible to go ahead. They won’t want an aircraft stuck there getting hit by a hurricane anymore than you’ll want to be. But also these countries are a lot more used to handling these situations & will be led by the authorities. If your hotel gets damaged they’ll move you. From memory the hotels aren’t all fully booked at this time of year anyway. As long as you have good insurance, you’re in a really good position as someone with a package.

Do you have any info about this please as I’m supposed to be flying out of bhx to Cancun tomorrow & haven’t heard anything. I’ve bagged dropped luggage this afternoon as have been issued boarding passes.

I tried searching for this too and can’t find anything. They are also still selling Cancun holidays for tomorrow from Birmingham on the TUI website.

Thanks. If it ends up cancelled then better to know now than to turn up at airport. I don’t think this is right, if they were cancelling flights they would notify people surely?

I don’t think they’ll be cancelled. I suspect they will go ahead and they’ll be a day of pretty terrible weather on Friday.

The weather at Cancun airport looks set fair all day tomorrow.

I’d speculate if that BHX flight doesn’t operate it’s simply because TUI don’t want to take anyone into the area, but TBH looking at current forecasts (so subject to change) I’m not seeing winds much above 30 mph for the area around Cancun airports even looking at Thursday into Friday..but a chance of a fair bit of rain…

Good luck

I think it is rather unfair for the customer for a TUI to be the sole decision maker of the situation. Given there is pretty clear evidence of a natural disaster I think our choice of the risk should be taken in to account. I understand when people say it is hurricane season and why did you book it. But a hurricane hasn’t hit this early before and to be honest I was pretty stupid not to realise this.

Given there is pretty clear evidence of a natural disaster

Is there, where you are actually planning to go?

OK, it’s been horrendous in places like the Windward Isles but on present forecasts the storm is going to have nothing like that force by the time it gets to Cancun.

Totally agree. So far all that's forecast is some bad weather.

Also Tui have been flying for decades, they are experts in this. They will not want to land a plane in hurricane conditions and will not want to take people somewhere that their lives would be in danger - hardly good for business!

If the flights go ahead it'll be because the experts at Tui deem it to be safe and I'll trust them on that and if they don't it's because it's not safe and I'll just rebook

I've looked a the NOAA hurricane centre forcast and they are predicting it will have downgraded back out of hurricane force by Friday morning when it's due to reach Cancun. In all likelihood this early in the season it will fizzle out and you might have blustery first day. I would still go.

That’s my assumption it was the talk of cancelled flights out of bhx that was concerning me as I’m on one tomorrow.

lots of fake news going around at the moment.

I hope all will be well as this is a much needed holiday !

Isn’t category 1 is still a hurricane? I am sorry I am not used to hurricanes but when the panic settles in it looks like a natural disaster in the image I attached.

This is all quite surreal, I’m currently sat around a pool in playa del carmen with clear blue skies reading about this hurricane that’s due to hit in a couple of days. Nothing from TUI and nothing from the hotel at the moment. In fact we’re due to go on an excursion tomorrow and at the moment that’s not affected. Keeping fingers and toes crossed this blows over and we’re on our way home on Sunday