Compensation from 20h delayed flight

[HobnobbingAboutHobnobs]

In June, I flew to Greece with Jet2 and my flight was delayed by 20 hours. I was (eventually) given some refreshment vouchers and put in a hotel overnight, but spent 6 hours in the tiny airport cafe with my two children (3y and 4m) and all our luggage (including car seat and pushchair). In addition, other passengers (without children) from our flight were sent to hotels before me. By the time I had got to where they put us, it was 8.30 and I still had to get dinner for my eldest, so we weren't in bed until 10pm. Additionally, we missed a day of our holiday.

I used their online form to claim compensation for the disruption, and was told it would take 10 weeks to get back to me. Yesterday I received an email telling me that as the delay was due to reasons out of their control (basically blaming staffing and organisation issues at different airports) I will not receive any compensation. Apparently I can appeal this through CAA.

Does anyone have any experience of doing this, and is it worth the effort?

I've never done it myself, but I know airlines regularly try to wriggle out of compensating passengers by claiming the delay was outside their control and regularly lose when the passenger appeals. They can only refuse compensation in extraordinary circumstances, i.e. something out of the ordinary which is outside the airline's control. Without knowing exactly what they are claiming, it is difficult to know if the staffing and organisation issues would be classed as extraordinary circumstances. It certainly wouldn't be if it is their own staffing and organisation issues. It might be if it was other people's staffing issues.

Money saving expert is supposedly good for helping in this situation. They did have templates for emails too.

Use Resolver, it’s brilliant!
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@prh47bridge that's what they're claiming, that staffing issues at another airport delayed another flight, so our pilot couldn't fly until later, at which point our destination airport would have been closed, so delayed until the next day.
Thank you @declutteringmymind and @Lentil63, both of those websites gave me more info on how to appeal and I'm going to give it a go. 🤞

We had an 8 hour delay in 2013. Thomas Cook declined my claim. But 3 years later I found the paperwork, put in a claim on the Saturday night. Tuesday at 5am am email saying they had approved it and I got £2100 back the next day in my bank account.