Flight Cancelation/compensation

Last week I should have left Finland about 7.45pm but we were kept waiting because of technical problems. This went on and all we were told was they would get back to us by 9.15pm. Their way of getting back was simply to put cancelled on the board. Any-way to cut a long story short, about 10.30 they sent coachs and drove us back to our original destination and put us all up in a hotel, very nice with breakfast. Then they picked us up late afternoon the next day for flight home.
For us the only expense incurred was car parking at Gatwick, plus a late night and having to go to work early next morning. I was fairly happy with this but my Mother in Law keeps on at us to make a claim with the airline, she has quoted all the legislation put in place to cover this.
Is it worth it? or do I just put it down to a slight inconvenience, after all I would not have liked to fly with a technical fault even though it was the heating in the cockpit that had packed up.

If you are delayed by 4 hours or more, the airline have to provide you with food, drink and possibly accommodation. In my recent experience, they did neither of these so we had to claim for purchases.
If its a technical fault, they have to fix it or provide an alternative flight. It seems in your case, they did the decent thing and flew you back once it had been fixed.
I dont see anything you can claim for, other than possibly a lost days work, but I think you'd find it very hard to get anything back.

I am still battling to get my tour op to accept responsibility for their chartered airline failing to load the bags on board or get them to us for 3 days.

See what you think, but what exactly does your MIL think you are entitled to?

MIL keeps quoting things from various web sites.

http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/travel/flight-delays

Depends who your airline was.

I had a 12 hour delay with Easyjet last year, who thought a cup of coffee and a croissant was suffient, and refused to give us a penny in compensation. I gave up after 3 letters and multiple emails. Useless company who will never have my custom again.

The year before I had a 9 hour delay with Thomson, but they gave us plenty of drinks and food vouchers, and made sure no one incurred any extra parking charges.

Sometimes it can be more hassle that it's worth, and like trying to get blood out of a stone!

I wrote a long post on this - I wonder where it went :?:

Anyway, Tony and Gadgetgirl seem to have said most of it now.

Sorry Rose, I've got to go out now and I haven't got time to write it all over again - I've only just noticed it never got posted up.

Ally

AllyG wrote:I wrote a long post on this - I wonder where it went :?:

Bulgaria :D

gadgetgirl79 wrote:Depends who your airline was.

I had a 12 hour delay with Easyjet last year, who thought a cup of coffee and a croissant was suffient, and refused to give us a penny in compensation. I gave up after 3 letters and multiple emails. Useless company who will never have my custom again.

The year before I had a 9 hour delay with Thomson, but they gave us plenty of drinks and food vouchers, and made sure no one incurred any extra parking charges.

Sometimes it can be more hassle that it's worth, and like trying to get blood out of a stone!

Thats exactly what they want you to do. A friend of mine was charged £400 extra by Ryanair when he checked in because his party were thrown out of the online check in system as it was not operating properly. They had to pay to fly, but he wrote letters of complaint and made numerous phone calls, ending in a personal letter to Mr O'Leary addressed to him and to be opened by him only, and within a week the money was refunded.
If you are persistent, assuming you are also correct in your claim, you will get something, but they work on the basis of saying no until you go away as one lost customer is better than one who they owe money to.