If like me you get on a plane in order to go on holiday, and then sit with barely restrained excitement whilst they do pre-flight checks and it feels it takes entirely too long to actually lift off and leave the country, then you may be sympathetic to my cause in this post.
My sister and I had been looking forward to a cruise holiday, a Star Trek cruise holiday at that, for around a year. We each booked flights, checked our passports and ESTA waivers were still valid, packed up uniforms, holiday essentials and tiny wee instant printers for door decorations and drove off to dingy, expensive Heathrow airport. (Incidentally, I didn’t pay for my flight - I used all my air miles to get a free seat, then only had to pay the airport taxes. This alone came to £250, so thanks, Heathrow, for being the most expensive airport for passenger taxes in the world before they even choose a flight.)
Anyway, we get on the plane and everything seems to be moving in the right direction. To the rest of the passengers the plane is apparently really hot - for me it’s comfortably warm (and I was still wearing a fleece). As the pre-flight checks go on it becomes apparent that we have no air-con. The pilot comes over the tannoy and tells us that we can’t take off without it, and that we’re waiting for an engineer to arrive. 20 - 30 minutes should do it, he says, and then we’ll be off.
An hour after that, people are complaining and getting up and walking about, checking their travel insurance, checking connecting flights, and basically freaking out. This whole time, to distract myself from climbing the walls because OH MY STEPHEN FRY PEOPLE ARE OBNOXIOUS AND JUST FUCKING ANNOYING AND WHY CAN’T WE TAKE OFF ALREADY BECAUSE WE’RE LOSING HOLIDAY TIME, I’ve been playing games on my iPhone with my wireless headphones in (Jabra, not Apple). I’ve been on ‘airplane’ (AEROPLANE) mode for the whole thing, apart from posting an update to Facebook to tell people who were eager to know about the start to my holiday how shit the beginning was, so that had saved a bit of battery. However, as the HOURS dragged on I realised I was down to about 40%. Not urgent, I thought, as we’ll be taking off soon which means I can plug into the power socket anyway. I’d just have to wait until we took off.
The pilot tells us that the engineer doesn’t have the right part so he’ll have to go get one. But not to worry, because it’ll only be - you’ve guessed it - 20 - 30 minutes and then we’ll be off.
Another hour goes by and now they’re handing out tiny bottles of water and snacks that they’ve had to get from a catering truck on the tarmac, seeing as they can’t dig into our flight reserves. People are still complaining but the cabin crew are being really nice to everyone and managing to remain cheerful and optimistic (no small feat considering people are getting arsey - as if cabin crew can do anything about air-con not working at a moving-parts level anyway). It’s fast approaching 4 hours’ delay - and my sister (who used to be an insurance broker for a living) has been Sam Winchestering the internet for compensation guidelines. The snooty couple across from me have been whinging at the top of their voices about how they’re going to be late for their summer home in Miami - the housekeeper turned the pool on two days ago, you know, and now it’s the right temperature, and she’s also stocked the place with food and booze and their first pool party guests are expected to arrive on time and they can’t be late…
Uh-huh.
Anyway, turns out that there’s this little EU regulation called EU261/2004 EC - otherwise known as the Denied Boarding Regulation. This states that if you take off from an EU airport and land at your destination late by at least 3 hours (4 hours for long haul flights), then you are entitled to claim compensation to a maximum of €600.
Nice.
Guess what we did after finishing the holiday and getting back to Blighty? I wrote a letter to Virgin (using the template that Which? give out) and waited. They responded the next day, asking me to use their web-based claiming system instead. This I did, and I received an automated acknowledgement of my claim. Skip to barely a week later, and they send me an email offering me €600 in compensation, and asking me to provide payment details. I’ve done this too - the rest could take 10 working days. However, it’s money well earned by getting the holiday off to a bad start; once we did take off the power sockets didn’t work. And there’s the little matter of my sister trying to watch Kingsman: The Golden Circle and wondering why Tom Cruise appeared to have a 20-odd minute cameo based somewhere in the jungle. When I explained it was American Made and not Kingsman, she tried again. However, it didn’t matter what you chose to watch, all you got was American Made. I didn’t realise how bad the problem was until I got up to go to the loo, and on the way back spotted the same bloody film in varying stage of running time on each screen for every passenger still awake.
That aside, the compensation has been one good thing about the entire debacle. For me, it’s the first time I’d had a noticeable flight delay; luckily we had no connecting flights, and we hadn’t missed our cruise ship because we opted to fly in the day before - precisely for the reason of avoiding problems. So that went well. My sister however was not amused as she has had a history of delays and problems with Virgin. All I can say is I hope this is the only time I’m delayed by 4 bloody hours.
If you do run into the same problem, make sure you claim. I think it’s more psychological than financial; the feeling that you’ve somehow ‘got something back’, when in fact you haven’t at all, does cheer you up.
And that’s all the shit that’s fit to print. Enjoy the weak winter sun while you can and I’ll be back soon with more random stuff.
Soopy twist.
No comments:
Post a Comment