Flight cancellations

[Singinginthesnow]

Hi all

We are supposed to fly on the 20th to Spain with vueling.

I have just seen the same flight as us but for today has been cancelled. I'm starting ti worry now. How much notice do they give you that the flight is cancelled? Does anyone know. They are cancelling due to the same reason as easy jet etc.

I had my BA flight cancelled yesterday at 3 weeks’ notice.

I fly back and forward frequently between Spain and UK. So far nothing has been cancelled the people I know that have been cancelled have had over a weeks notice si stop worrying. It's not as bad as you think most are flying as normal
I have a flight today too

Join some of the various travel groups on Facebook- search for Tui and / or Jet2 etc under groups and loads will come up. Many people have had their flight cancelled when they are literally sitting on the plane waiting to go.

It seems to vary. I tend to fly BA and they generally give you at least a few days’ notice, more often a couple of weeks or more.

But I also had a BA flight cancelled with less than five hours’ notice last week. They did rebook me, but three days later and to a totally different city.

Some airlines are cancelling on the day.

This is the current risk we take if you choose to fly at this time when the aviation industry and the supporting infrastructure isn’t truly geared up to the demand post-pandemic

You’ll get a load of experiences shared on here but nothing will reassure you until you’re on the tarmac and feel those wheels lift off

There's no way to tell. Your flight on the 20th could be almost full, and todays have been only 20% booked so got chopped and consolidated.

Like a PP said, the very great majority of travellers at the moment are having no issue or minor issues (we're going away this month, flights both there and back have been cancelled at different times, but just booked on to the next available one same day, no big deal). The only reason you're seeing the drama in the papers is because 'John Smith flew to Barcelona and back without problem' isn't news.

Dd has flown 4 times recently without issue, my friend has had 2 flights a cancelled, sorry it's luck really

Thanks all. Yes we booked about 6 months ago. If they have overbooked, would us doing online check in the week before when it becomes available straight away help with that? We have never flown before so not sure how it all works. Thanks again

TUI Flight to Tenerife was cancelled after we had boarded and had sat on the runway for 2 hours. Then had a 41 hour delay. It was an absolute shambles. We lost 2 days of the holiday.

Flight are not being cancelled due to overbooking.

They are being cancelled because airports don't have enough baggage handlers and security staff to handle the passenger numbers. Or airlines don't have enough staff for the plane.

As a passenger there is nothing you can do but hope for the best I'm afraid.

I hope you get away.

I did with no problems.

Ours was cancelled while we were queuing for the gate after being told it was delayed by two hours.

Who are you flying with?

Tui for example have changed their online check in to 48 hours now. I think a lot of other providers are doing the same thing.

No cancellations but taken 3 flights in the past 6 weeks all of which had delays at every stage. Shortest delay was 3 hours.

Yes do online check in. Normally the last to check in and/or have seats allocated would be the ones offloaded in the event of over sales.

Airports are forcing airlines to cancel a percentage of their flights, the airlines may be given little notice of this. Most airlines would choose to cancel flights more than 14 days prior to avoid having to pay EU compensation (where eligible). You cannot predict which dl9ghts will be affected so try not to worry, they will contact you if you're affected.

We are going with vueling a Spanish airline. OK thanks all. Just cross our fingers

@Singinginthesnow if there are still loads of cancellations closer to the day of your flight I would also highly suggest arriving four to five hours early. That way you can be first in line to check in at the counter and likely first to be rescheduled on a flight before the chaos starts.

We just had this happen with a friend a couple days ago and I advised her the same thing. She was #6 in line when the check in counter opened and was able to make it on to the plane without being shunted on to a different flight.

In her case the airline had cancelled 3 days’ prior flights and there were people being rebooked even from 2 days prior. The airline was essentially consolidating flights to save fuel without care to its passengers. So definitely check in early online and get to the airport very early. Keep an eye on if Vueling is consolidating and cancelling flights a couple days prior. That will tell how aggressive to be to ensure you get on your flight versus being bumped for earlier distressed passengers. Good luck!

We had an EasyJet flight to Germany cancelled last week with 3 weeks notice

Some good advice from PP,

To add, read up on EC261 (UK261 as some airlines refer to it now),

Check in as early as possible and select a seat online if you can. If you cannot select a seat, that's when you need to start planning back ups. This usually means that the flight is oversold. (If it was transatlantic - could mean extra security check, but not for short haul).

Look at all the flights that day going to your destination or within 300km, screen shot - use Skyscanner or something similar, and firmly ask that the airline book you on which ever has availability, you may need to re check availability in the queue. You will have this legal right. Airlines don't like to do it though. This applies to cancellations of less than 2 weeks notice only though. 2 weeks is the magic number as compensation may be applied depending on your new flights as well.

You are likely to get 14 days notice so you just get no compensation.

Thank you! OK. We are supposed to fly 7:40 so aim to get there at about 1pm.

update

Being the paranoid person I am I have been looking at the flights and ours had disappeared from the airlines timetable! And said booking not recognised. After a lot of tracking down and calling the people we bought the tickets from who said there wasn't an issue. I found out that ours was cancelled and we need to get an earlier flight with a connecting flight!!! Hadn't been told!

Anyway. We now have our boarding passes and I have chosen our seats. And printed, saved and whatsapped for extra back up! And the same for return! If I hadn't been paranoid and checked we wouldn't of even known of the change to do something about it! I know things can still change but at least we have a boarding pass now!

I said to dh if I want paranoid we probably wouldn't be going!

This is the thing though - from my local airport there is only one flight a week to many destinations. So how can they book you one on the same day if it's cancelled?

@garlictwist Well they can't always, but easyJet and BA who are cancelling most often have several a day from the bigger airports, therefore for many of the tens of thousands of people reportedly 'affected' (including us) by their flight being cancelled have actually only suffered a minor inconvenience, not a holiday-destroying disaster.

Just don't buy tickets from bravo fly. Aka lastminute.com they didn't tell us the flights had changed. I had to do anlot of investigating to find out! Turns out the email to check my booking on vueling website was [email protected] not my email that I gave to bravofly!!

Sorry didn't mean to hyperlink those