-
Friends are due to fly Melbourne through to Belfast next week. Logged in to booking to find that the flight is full and we have been removed off it! Quantas only offering refund but I’m pretty sure they would be entitled to rerouting, but not 100% sure as it’s outside Europe. Any advise greatly appreciated!
You are going to have to give more details on the routing and how this was booked.
But absent some important details as this appears to involve a flight to Europe on a non EU carrier then EU/UK protections don’t apply.
Pretty scummy thing to happen though.
Would be worth four friends giving a call to their travel insurance to see what they will cover.
I think they are flying Melbourne- Adelaide- Singapore- London – Belfast. It was booked with airmiles and cash
Whi did they book with though? Which airline?
Quantas
Do you maybe mean Qantas?
=== another detailed post lost here
Unfortunately, your friends have no particular rights (and no UK/EC261 ones) beyond QF’s own rebooking policies so need to see what they will offer. Passenger rights are remarkably limited in Australia.
Do you maybe mean Qantas?
it’s quite clear who the OP means so pedantry isn’t helpful.
Oh for crying out loud another post just vanishes
@Rob this is getting riduclous with posts going into moderation or just vanishingEu 261 and UK261 rights are based on operating carrier not which airline put its flight number on that flight.
If Qantas sold the ticket and the flight is a Qantas aircraft or any other non UK non European airline’s aurcraft then as ChrisC says you have no protection from the above legislation.
If there are 4 of you and only 2 offloaded then I guess you could phone Qantas and say you’d all like to travel together and ask for all 4 to be rebooked.
But from what I hear every single flight out of Australia is rammed and I strongly suspect they won’t want to reroute you.
So as ChrisC says it’s your travel insurance to look to – whether standalone travel insurance or possibly a benefit of a credit or bank card you might have.
Look on the bright side – at least Qantas is offering a refund even though them cancelling you is mean and rotten. I heard Qantas cancelled flights in Covid and refused to refund them claiming they got to keep the money and people only had their travel insurance to turn to. I am really surprised Australians put up with this.
Let us know how it turns out as this will be a good reminder to readers to avoid Qantas flights.
There is just one thing you can try. If they’ve cancelled the return from Europe/UK to Oz then that leg is entirely covered but if that’s cancelled then which airline doesn’t matter and EU UK261 covers you. So you would have rights to tell them you can get yourselves to Europe but on the return you need rerouting and all the costs paid.
Read in Flight Cancellations and Changes category on here for what it would take but I think you can win. I’d base my claim on fully flex amd book far out in case it can be resolved
=== another detailed post lost here
It may appear later – like I had earlier today when I had 2 vanish this morning (then appear later) so I ended up just typing in the phone number than try to insert yet another link to that well know scam website that is Air France!
@tazzy all I can think of is if you post this on the QF board on flyer talk and let the experts there give you their sage advice on QFs policies on this.Australian Frequent Flyer forum may be more useful than flyertalk
@Lady London
That is actually a superb bit of advice and deftly circumvents the problem that the inbound flight from a non-european country on a non-european airline is not covered by the Regs. I wish I had thought of it. If the cancelled ticket (leaving the UK to non-european country) is like an avios ticket (fully cancellable for a few quid) then purchasing a one way flexible ticket on another carrier would be completely reasonable and you could recover the cost of this through MCOL and use the sums awarded to pay for a less flexible standard ticket. You would probably make a profit on this and frankly I rather liked the judge’s reasoning in @MingtheMerciless case that you paid for a flight and if you wish to cancel and retain the monies from your new paid-for flexible ticket then so be it.
@JDB would be perfectly right in saying that there is no guarantee of success but properly argued at Court this would be a sound claim. I would not make it however if I was not prepared to risk losing and having to pay the cheaper return ticket out of my own pocket. Obviously if your court case was heard before you booked the cheaper non-cancellable return then you would only be risking the Court fees.I have to say my desire to sock it to Qantas would properly make me book a Qatar flight and get some BA tier points in the bag too! It doesn’t really matter who the cancellable flexible flight is on and I’d be just about ethically comfortable with @MingtheMerciless approach (booking a flexible flight for compensation knowing I’d likely cancel it and retain the monies) but for me personally I feel it is close to the ethical line and would not want to say anything that was not true in a witness statement etc
Obviously all of the above would be avoided if one’s insurer will pay for a replacement flight and they should be the first port of call.
Secondly, but probably more fatal to the claim is the fact that if your friends are Australian then pursuing the Court process in the UK would be problematic although they could ask for any hearing to be by video link and most documents can be filed online so I guess its possible although adds a further layer of complexity unlikely to be attractive to a non-lawyer. Still looks like another line of attack against these fiends has been identified…
==a reply lost here==
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.
