Is anyone claiming from their airline for hotel/food costs due to volcanic ash disruption?

[hattyyellow]

Our easyjet flight was rescheduled for a week after our original return date and we incurred a number of hotel and food costs. Easyjet still seem to be saying online that they will not refund any hotel costs etc. Ryanair have backed down so I'm wondering if the other cheap airlines will follow suit?

I phoned the offical airline complaints body and they say that under EU regulations the airlines do have to cover your hotel and food costs- regardless of what the airlines are saying.

Would be interested to hear from anyone planning to claim back costs due to volcanic ash disruption. Easyjet are particulary hard to get hold of on the phone so I've e-mailed them to ask for who to write to to claim my money.. would rather have got someone on the phone to get a name of someone to harangue!

I've just downloaded a sample letter from thisismoney.co.uk I don't know if its any good but at least a starting point.

we are considering a claim for food expenses for DC1 and 2 after they had a 9 day delay. Have kept receipts but wasn't sure how too about claiming as nothing on the BMI website.
will watch this with interest and have a look at that website recommended. Thanks jollyma

Thanks both. THat website sounds very useful. Easyjet have come back to me today and said that they will consider our claim - hurrah! They need me to return my details and scanned reciepts by e-mail in the next 72 hours. Not sure why exactly 72 hours! Will keep you posted.

Wish we'd got reciepts for everything but at the time everyone was saying we wouldn't get a penny and with three under fives there wasn't always time to hang about waiting for reciepts! Have you got reciepts for every cost?

thats the trouble hatty, you can't possibly get receipts for everything. Here in Saudi it is a nightmare trying to get them as people simply don't bother with them. It would be better if the airlines had a set amount per day for food allowances.

I've put together my letter today and will get it sent off as soon as someone is going back to the UK and can post it for me.

That's really interesting Hatty. we also had a flight cancelled by Easyjet and ended up spending a fortune coming back by train. How did you contact Easyjet? Is there a phone number or email?

I read the regulation while i was away and thought that we did have a right to compensation, so haven't claimed my refund yet - didn't want to admit that is their only liability (I am a lawyer!). We kept all receipts - even for new underwear!

Pollyanna, i've read through loads of info on the internet and am struggling to work out what to claim for. I know ryanair wont pay my whole bill as we stayed on at an expensive hotel but don't know what i can expect from "reasonable expenses". Do you think i should specify an amount or just whack the lot in and see what they say?

From what i can work out if you made your own way home and got a refund on your cancelled flight you cant claim anything from the airline but if your insurance company is paying you can claim cancellation fees.

Pollyanna I e-mailed their main contact address on the www - [email protected]

Was pleasantly suprised to hear back from them so quickly - I got a named person to deal with my claim who asked me to submit reciepts to them. We e-mailed them off last night. Trying to make a case for the fact that we left the town we had flown to and travelled a couple of hours south - there was little accommodation available there and no family rooms (we need a baby cot for our youngest).

I'm hoping they won't say that we could only claim for hotels in the same town. If they do, I'm prepared to kick up a fuss as we really really need the money back - we had not budgeted for a 2 week holiday!

These people were very usefuland have a volcano disruption info pack on their website. www.auc.org.uk/

The main thing to quote it seems is the EU regulation 261/2004. According to AUC, airlines can claim extraordinary circumstances in this instance for not paying anyone compensation. But no matter what the circumstances, they must pay your hotel, travel and food while you are "under their care". If however you chose to accept the full refund for your flight and make your own way home, according to AUC, you have ended their duty of care as you ended the contract with them and cannot claim further travel costs.. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_261/2004

"Refreshments, communication and accommodation
When passengers become entitled to these assistances, they must be offered, free of charge,

Meals and refreshments in proportion to the waiting time
Two telephone calls, fax or telex messages, or emails
Hotel accommodation and transport between the airport and the hotel, if a stay of one or more nights, or a stay additional to that intended by the passenger becomes necessary
In the case of a delay, the airline may withdraw or abrogate these entitlements if offering them would delay the flight further."

Really hope our claim and everyone elses gets through!

Jollyma, there doesn't seem to be anything in the EU regulations to say what the cost of the hotel should be..surely one could argue that at short notice one must take any hotel regardless of price and that it would be difficult therefore to get a cheap one?

Were you travelling with children? I am using this as part of our case to say that we had to find somewhere as quickly as possible as my small children were exhausted and needed accommodation asap.

This might help - this is the EU Regulation for cancelled or dealyed flights and what is covered by the airlines.

EU Regulation 261/200 - Air Transport Users Council website

Wow, looks encouraging! So Easyjet have backed down - thought I'd post their reply just in case it was of use to anyone in preparing their claim!

We tried to get them to pay for our train journey to the airport the night the flight was cancelled as their representative said she didn't understand why we had bothered to turn up, even though their www was still showing the flight as scheduled despite all other cancellations..

Dear Mrs. Yellow,

Thank you for your detailed response.

While your decision to travel to xxx town in order to obtain more affordable accommodation was understandable, we can regrettably not offer you compensation for the transportation costs incurred.

I can also not offer you compensation for the two train tickets as these were purchased before your original flight's scheduled departure time. The only transportation costs I can refund are those to and from the hotel. I have therefore refunded your taxi on 4/16 and your train ticket on 4/22. I also am, unfortunately, not able to refund your phone call expenses in the absence of receipts.

I have provided you compensation for all your meal cost claims excepting the 5.40 EUR spent on Beer on April 16 as we do not refund passengers for alcoholic beverages.

The total I have refunded, is the entire amount spent on hostel accommodation, your food costs, and your taxi and train costs between the hotel and airport combined. The amount has been refunded to the card originally used to make your easyJet reservation and should be in your account within 15-20 working days.

I hope that I have answered your question and resolved the matter. I am sorry for any inconvenience you have experienced and hope you choose to fly with easyJet in the future.

Yours Sincerely,
Gregory Sonkin
Customer Experience Champion

Ruby BA will refund the point of sale - ie the agent (lastminute.com). The agent will refund you. They should not charge any admin costs to you to do this.

lastminute.com are on Facebook and their wall is full of disgruntled customers. But they are getting a response there from lastminute.co. So try posting a comment on their FB page.

BA and Virgin flight refunds for passengers have already started to filter back to agents and tour operators, and should then be forwarded to the clients. You could call BA to see if the refund has been sent to the agent, not sure if they will tell you either way.

I read on one forum they were told the refund could take up to 6 months! To have to wait max of 6 weeks is probably more reasonable.

Ruby BA will refund the point of sale - ie the agent (lastminute.com). The agent will refund you. They should not charge any admin costs to you to do this.

lastminute.com are on Facebook and their wall is full of disgruntled customers. But they are getting a response there from lastminute.co. So try posting a comment on their FB page.

BA and Virgin flight refunds for passengers have already started to filter back to agents and tour operators, and should then be forwarded to the clients. You could call BA to see if the refund has been sent to the agent, not sure if they will tell you either way.

I read on one forum they were told the refund could take up to 6 months! To have to wait max of 6 weeks is probably more reasonable.

Ruby - lastminute will probably tell you to make any additional expense claims direct with the airline. But check with lastminute first.

BA website.

www.britishairways.com/travel/volcano-rebooking/public/en_gb

"If your flight was cancelled and you have some additional expenses that you wish to make a claim for please post your receipts, flight details and bank details to your local customer relations department." - quote

Their address can be found under our ?contact us? pages.

Last updated 09:30 - 28 April 2010

My claim is from ryanair and it seems from their website that i have to post the claim to them in Ireland. I'm slightly dubious about sending the original receipts as requested as it would be very easy for them to 'lose' them.

Hatty, hope you dont mind me asking. Was your claim more than the 250\400\600€ limit that it specifies for compensation as part of the legislation (depending on distance of flight)?

Hatty what did you say in your original email?

Good news and well done! I must get my act together now (although we did only get back on Friday). We were travelling with 5 children aged from 2-11. We didn't stay in expensive hotels (just 3 star) and basic train tickets but it was still very expensive. We had an extra 4 nights away plus alot of train fares.

Pollyanna, my original e-mail was fairly simple- just requesting that under the EU regulations they cover my hotel and food and travel costs. Good luck with your claim!

Jollyma, our claim should have been a lot more than it was but our extended stay was quite manic with 3 under 5's and we ended up not getting receipts for everything. Plus, we didn't think at the time that anyone would cover us! Our claim we put in was for about 540 euros I think and we got most of it back..

My understanding from the AUC was that there are 2 areas you can claim under in most situations.

One is your hotel and food and the other is a general amount of compensation to make up for the inconvienence, which is graded in the amounts you describe.

My understanding was that because this is classed as an extraordindary circumstance the airlines get out of paying the general compensation but still have to pay your hotel/food costs regardless of what caused the cancellation. So the costs shouldn't matter for the hotel and food, unless you booked a suite at the Ritz for each member of your party, when there were acceptable hotels that cost less..

Thanks hatty. I've sent off my claim today and found out i can claim £300 per head from travel insurance. I'll be keeping my fingers crossed.

Have just sent my claim off today to BMI. watch this space......

Fingers crossed for everyone!

I booked a flight which was cancelled due to Volcanic Ash with FlyThomasCook through an agent called Vacation Travel. When the flight was first cancelled I was promised a refund within 7 - 10 days. After two weeks they contacted me again and said I would get the refund within another 2 weeks. Then when nothing happened I contacted them again....and was promised a refund within a further 2 weeks. The latest excuse is that Thomas Cook was unable to do a BACS payment to Vacation Travel due to the fact that their credit card details had expired. (Obviously no-one at Thomas Cook knows how to use a phone or email and request new details). Therefore they said they were raising a cheque which would take up to 14 days to be delivered to Vacation Travel. (Apparently Thomas Cook cannot afford first class stamps!). Now they are saying that it will take up to 30 days to send this cheque. This would bring the wait up to 11 weeks after the flight was cancelled. I realise they have hundreds (perhaps thousands) of payments to process but I also know that they are taking hundreds of new bookings every day and they are not taking 3 months to process these.....on the contrary they expect immediate payment by credit card when booking. If they expect us to do this - they should be able to do the same!

Hi we got a refund on our Ryanair flight that was cancelled and we rebooked with a different airline to get home (eventually, 8 days later) Ryanair have refunded us the return leg of our journey but we didn't think we were entitled to hotel/food costs for the 8 days (I think it said they wouldn't pay this if you have asked for a refund on the flight) is this correct? Or can we still put a claim in? Its so confusing!

Thanks

I've still heard nothing from BMI in response to my letter of 1st May. Still watching this space!

Not sure about your question fimac but it may be putting in a claim anyway, if you don't ask you don't get!

I suffered two cancelled easyjet flights last weekend (not volcanic ash related) and for one we were put up in a hotel & given a voucher for an evening meal. It was really stingey though - just 20 swiss francs which we were told to spend either in the hotel restaurant or the bar and had to pay any excess ourselves. The very cheapest entree in the restaurant was 19SF and all the mains were more, so it really wasn't adequate. They also didn't give us anything for lunch the following day.