To cancel a holiday with TC flights?

[WalkiesPlease]

Hi all, I've done something a bit stupid...

In February, I booked a villa in Greece for a week for me and my partner. I organised the flights separately with Thomas Cook and although I can claim these back through my credit card, I didn't take out travel insurance, so I'm not going to be able to get any money back from the villa if we can't get to it (we paid £600 for it).

The problem I'm having is that the flights there and back have literally tripled in price, they're not even on the dates of our holiday so we'd have to come back a day early and there are literally no direct flights. The cheapest return flight doesn't even take us back to the original airport we'd be leaving from! Even if we claim back on the flights (£180), we'll have to pay another £400 each for new flights, so we'll EACH be spending £1100 on a 6 day holiday in Greece(!!!). The only cost I had anticipated for this month was £200 spending money (petrol for hire car, tourism tax, eating out)..

I know it's up to me to decide whether or not it's worth just losing out on the money we originally paid for the villa, but I was wondering if anyone knows of anywhere I might be able to find some cheaper flights?! I've tried easyJet and skyskanner but no such luck. One journey back was 21 hours, involved a self-transfer to another airport and stopped in both Dubai and Milan.. literally the journey from hell!

Have you looked at all of Ryanair, Jet2, flybe, BA and whatever else travel Republic and Skyscanner comes up with?

Skyscanner at least often misses out Ryanair so always worth looking on the RA Website.

The villa has to be paid for whether you use it or not? You lose all your money if you cancel?

It might be worth cancelling the whole lot but your credit card should also refund consequential losses. So loss of refund rental price or increased cost of replacement flights if you still go.

We were booked to travel with Monarch 2 days after they went bust and I got replacement flights same days, same airport was very lucky but I acted fast, I basically rebooked when I got up and saw the news. Cost £200 more than the lost monarch flights but I got the extra refunded from the credit card so all good.

The £600 is gone (assuming the villa won't refund) so try and forget about that. Your choice is a holiday for whatever the flights are going to cost, or no holiday for no cost. Or for that matter a completely different holiday if you think it comes in better value.

Is it possible that flights may go down again later if, say, another airline picks up the TC slots?

I'm a bit of an airline geek and know that some airlines including jet 2 are looking to massively increase their flights this winter in light of tc going under. But they need to get hold of the TC slots first which won't happen overnight.

There is a good chance new flights will become available but quite possibly not for a few weeks at least.

Is a tough call- how soon are you going?

Sorry for the delayed response. @Frazzled2207 we are going in 3 weeks! I will keep an eye out but I don't think that's enough time for the prices to reduce to an acceptable amount.. we shall see. @BarbaraofSeville thank you for your suggestions, I went and looked on the websites you recommended but unfortunately they're still at least 2x the original price.. I hadn't heard of consequential losses however so I'll look into it!

Right now we think we'll probably end up cancelling the whole thing; we'll still lose the villa but then we'll "only" have paid £280 each as opposed to the £1000+ plus it would cost to actually go on the holiday.. a bit of a shame but a good excuse for a staycation!

Thank you all for your help.

sometimes hotels or villas will allow you to move the date rather than just cancel, so you might be able to still find a reasonably priced flight if you move the date

Who did you book the villa through?