Am I due compensation if a cancelled flight cuts my holiday short?

Simon Calder answers your questions on holiday disruption, passport stamps and rail fares in the UK

A British Airways flight from Madeira to Heathrow is one of several alternatives (Simon Calder)

Q I am currently in Madeira and have just received an email from easyJet saying my flight back to London Gatwick next Wednesday 1 June has been cancelled. The only flight available is on Monday, so I lose two days of my holiday. Am I due compensation?

James C

A The latest batch of easyJet cancellations – 24 flights to and from Gatwick every day between today and Monday, 6 June – has me seriously concerned. The principle is sound enough. Britain’s biggest budget airline has been making very short-notice cancellations all week. By thinning out the schedules, easyJet hopes to avoid the ghastly business of people learning their early morning flight has been cancelled while in a taxi to airport.

My worry is that easyJet is not upfront about your right to an alternative flight on a different airline, as well as its obligation to pay you hundreds of pounds in compensation. The standard cancellation message says: “We’ve got three options available for you – please have a look at them and choose the one that suits you best.”

The first one is “switch to another flight for free” – which you are encouraged to do through the easyJet app or website that delivers only easyJet options. (The next two comprise a voucher option, which no one should rationally choose, or a refund.) I believe a rational traveller like you will conclude these are your only choices. Only if you read down to “additional information” and click on the “delays and cancellations” link, then click on “cancellations” and plough through 15 paragraphs will you discover your entitlement to another flight.

When an airline cancels a flight – for any reason – it has a strict obligation to help you to fulfil your travel plans. Anyone whose flight is cancelled and who still wants to travel should rely on the rule that easyJet must pay for your seat on the original day of travel if one is available – even on a rival carrier. Next Wednesday there are plenty of options from Madeira to the London area, including Ryanair to Stansted and British Airways to Heathrow. If easyJet will not pay for one upfront, then you can buy a ticket and claim it back – along with the £350 per person that you are owed in cash compensation.

Thousands of easyJet passengers were stranded at Gatwick after the airline suffered a major systems crash (Supplied via Twitter)

Q We’re here in Mykonos for an extra day due to our 9pm easyJet flight to Gatwick being cancelled yesterday. We have been rebooked onto a Luton flight for today. Do you think all will be fixed by this afternoon?

Also, I thought technical issues could not be deemed extraordinary, especially when only impacting a single airline? I’m thinking EU compensation in addition to expenses.

“Lloydygirl”

A I hope your situation is comfortable. For people who are not under intense time pressure to return to the UK, the chaos that unfolded for easyJet passengers at London Gatwick and elsewhere yesterday afternoon was not necessarily infuriating. More than 200 flights were cancelled because of an IT systems failure, including longer links such as yours from a lovely Greek island to Gatwick. Personally, I’d rather be stranded poolside in Mykonos than in an airport hotel in the Gatwick area.

To tackle your first question: I’m sorry to say that easyJet was already in considerable disarray before this IT meltdown. For example, 20 flights to and from Gatwick were cancelled yesterday morning because of staff shortages. This had nothing to do with the later IT outage, and everything to do with resourcing. While Luton hasn’t been nearly so badly affected (it has far fewer flights in the first place), there is no absolute certainty that the flight will go ahead. Indeed, I have asked easyJet how it intends to “rescue” people who are at the far end of some of the less frequent links such as Liverpool to Dalaman and Belfast International to Corfu. With upwards of 30,000 passengers out of position due to yesterday’s turmoil, some really heavy lifting is needed now – which could include chartering in some large aircraft to effectively conduct an airlift from distant airports.

On compensation: easyJet now tells me that the airline’s original claim that the IT issue was beyond its control was a mistake. The implication that it wouldn’t be paying compensation has been corrected. So you can collect £350.

Travel costs: the 50-page ID document costs £10 more than the regular 34-page version (Getty)

Q I saw your report that the prime minister says no one should be having to wait more than six weeks for a passport renewal. On a related topic: have they even considered they need to factor in that frequent travellers to Europe for work, leisure or family will need to renew more often now? Each visit uses up half a page checking in and out, and that is if it is stamped economically.

Susannah J

A Since the UK asked to be subject to the European Union “third country” conditions, Brexit has delivered all kinds of consequences for the traveller. These include the obligation of frontier officials in the EU (and wider Schengen area, including Iceland, Norway and Switzerland) to stamp British passports on arrival and departure. The intention is to determine whether the visitor has spent more than 90 days in the EU in the past 180 days, though I see no evidence that this calculation actually happens.

Anyway, the stamping (mostly) carries on as prescribed. For people who are going no further than Europe, this is not a particular problem: the EU allows British travellers in even if their passport is full. The EU’s Practical Handbook for Border Guards specifies: “The lack of empty pages in a passport is not, in itself, a valid and sufficient ground to refuse the entry of a person.” It says the traveller should be given a separate sheet of paper, “to which further stamps can be affixed”.

But the extra bureaucracy devours pages at an alarming rate – which could cause problems elsewhere. Many countries outside the EU (including African nations such as Morocco and Egypt) have strict requirements for the traveller to have a full blank page so that their stamps can be applied unsullied by other imprints; South Africa demands two pages.

Therefore it is important to keep an eye on how fast your passport is filling up. The 50-page frequent traveller passport costs £10 more than the regular 34-page version, but its 16 extra pages provide room for an additional 32 visits to Europe before that African adventure begins to be jeopardised. So personally I will pay extra for padding.

LNER also sells a wide range of cheaper, fixed Advance tickets (PA)

Q I’m standing in Leeds Bradford airport. The person behind me is flying to Dublin then from there to London Gatwick because it is cheaper than rail. How can the government justify such a broken rail system?

“Grumps”

A With just a week before the rail deal of the century opens in Germany – with unlimited travel nationwide for just €9 (£7.70) a month (around 25 pence per day) in June, July and August – your question is well timed. It is also a time in which we have seen, in quick succession, the mayor of Greater Manchester deplore the high “anytime” rail fares between his city and London – and a football fan flying from Newcastle to Stansted via Menorca, ostensibly to save money on £260 return rail ticket to the capital.

This story is part of the same narrative: that the £143 anytime fare from Leeds to London is a total rip-off compared with the (say) £10 tickets on Ryanair from Leeds Bradford to Dublin, with the same again to Gatwick.

As you might imagine, there is more to it than that. Two very different pricing policies are at work. First, Ryanair is perfectly happy to sell flights between the UK and Ireland (and to many other destinations) for what appears to be a loss. If that ticket really is £10, then just by stepping aboard the person behind you is costing Ryanair £3 – because Air Passenger Duty is £13. But Europe’s biggest budget airline didn’t get where it is today by losing money. It is taking a bet that he will pay extra for a specific seat (I wouldn’t) or to take more baggage than a small backpack (I might). These can be enough to turn a small loss into a small profit – given that there will be people on board who have paid a great deal more for the privilege of booking shortly before departure.

Which brings me to the second pricing policy: LNER charging a lot of money for a completely flexible peak-hour ticket that can be bought five minutes before departure. There is nothing wrong that I can see with the state-owned train operator doing that: it is providing a service at a price that some people (or more likely their companies) are happy, or at least prepared, to pay.

LNER also sells a wide range of cheaper, fixed advance tickets. Peak morning trains are unlikely to sell for much below £50. But if you can be flexible and can book well ahead, then there are plenty around later in the day for £19.80 – cheaper than that £20 deal on Ryanair. I predict that your neighbour may not be comparing like with like.

Via the latest Ask Me Anything at independent.co.uk/travel

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