Will easyJet refund the costs for a cancelled flight?

Q Our easyJet flight from Edinburgh to Nice got cancelled 10 minutes before we were due to go to the airport. It was 3am. After considering our limited options, with no alternative flights available, we made the decision to take things into our own hands and to drive from Edinburgh to Nice. We set off immediately towards the Channel Tunnel. Everything went as well as we could have hoped and we had a great trip.

I am in the process of claiming from easyJet. Do you think I am able to claim for expenses for costs incurred driving my own vehicle: fuel, tolls, Channel Tunnel? We have kept all our receipts.

A McG

A The airline that cancelled your flight says: “If there are no easyJet flights available to get you to your destination within 24 hours, you have the option to transfer to another airline, take a train, bus or hire a car ... you will be entitled to claim reasonable transport costs back.”

Now, the “24-hour” stipulation is not quite right; the Civil Aviation Authority has made it clear that the airline must get you to your destination on the same day if at all possible. Since easyJet has a maximum of one daily flight from Edinburgh to Nice, you can argue that there were no alternative flights.

In theory, then, you should be able to claim for the costs you incurred because of easyJet’s failure to operate the flight – arguably plus meals and en-route accommodation. But if the total turns out to be, say, £1,000, while your air fares amounted to just £400, you may get some pushback.

The airline may argue that you did not give it a chance to provide an alternative route – for example via one of the London airports or Amsterdam. That would have been my first thought. In the circumstances, though, your initiative should be rewarded, and I assume you will not add a figure for depreciation during the 2,000-mile round trip. I hope you can reach an agreeable compromise. On top of the recompense of your expense, you should each be eligible for £350 in statutory compensation for the inconvenience.

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Q In January 2022, we booked flights with British Airways from London Gatwick to Cagliari in Sardinia for travel in late September 2022. BA then emailed to change the dates by one day. Although the flight times were not as good, we contacted our hotel and managed to amend our booking, and reluctantly accepted the change. BA has now emailed again changing our return trip to one day earlier. In total, we have lost almost two days of our holiday as we had good flight times originally. We accepted the earlier date as we didn’t want to get stuck without a flight home.

This is extremely inconvenient as it’s my husband’s birthday. We had planned for him to spend his birthday in Sardinia. Are you able to advise me on my rights, please?

Amanda C

A Spending a birthday in Sardinia’s gorgeous capital sounds like an excellent plan. I imagine that you accepted these changes because you believed you had little choice. If, though, you still wanted to travel on the original dates, British Airways should have explained when it made the first change that you were perfectly entitled to insist on that option. As the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) has made repeatedly clear: “If airlines cannot reroute passengers on their own services or partner airlines on the same day, they should identify rerouting options on alternative airlines.“ If that was not offered to you, I believe you have a strong case for going back to BA and insisting that the airline pays for tickets on its rivals.

Ryanair has four flights a week from Stansted to Cagliari in September, and easyJet has three weekly flights from Gatwick. Hopefully, between them, you can find a combination of flights that suits. Ask British Airways to book them on your behalf – unless fares on the budget airlines are so low (typically £20-£40 one way on the dates I have checked) that you might prefer to ask BA for a full refund and make your own bookings. If British Airways proves sticky about agreeing to give your money back, mention the CAA requirement stated above.

Finally, for late September bookings in any year I recommend not booking before late August; there is very little downside (fares are unlikely to soar, and flights will not sell out a month ahead) and you will not find your plans messed around with flight cancellations.

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Q My daughter travelled to Turkey on 21 May and is working temporarily in a resort. We weren’t sure if the rule about staying a maximum of 90 days in any 180 days counted, as Turkey isn’t in the European Union. She went out earlier in the year to Turkey in April for 10 nights – so adding her dates together, if it’s 90 days she will have to come back at the beginning of August. People have told her that she could leave the country and go back in and she can stop for up to another 90 days. Is this a thing? Also if she came home and wanted to go on a holiday in Europe, could she do this?

Name supplied

A Since the birth of mass tourism, British people have worked in Mediterranean resorts – typically in bars catering to UK tourists. Generally, authorities have turned a blind eye to this practice, and of course while the United Kingdom was in the European Union they could work with few formalities in EU nations. Turkey has never been in the Union (and, despite the insistence of the Vote Leave campaign in the Brexit referendum, will not join any time soon). Its immigration rules are entirely its own, though the maximum stay policy mirrors the EU: you can stay up to 90 days in any 180-day period. Now, there is also a long-established practice of “visa runs”: leaving a country very briefly in order to reset the clock on a stay. But while this fairly rudimentary trick works for a number of Asian nations, the 90/180-day rule renders it useless for Turkey. Suppose your daughter left on the day she reached 90 days: when she tried to reapply, assuming the frontier officials were on the ball, they would calculate her score and deny her entry. There is, though, no problem with your daughter taking a holiday in the European Union. The maximum stay rule is the same, but it is an entirely separate set of calculations about dates. As she has spent so much time in Turkey, therefore by definition not being in the EU, she will not approach the EU’s 90/180 limit. Were money no object, one could contemplate a happy future endlessly shuttling between Greece and Turkey, spending 90 days at a time in each nation and staying within the rules.

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Q I am booking a flight to Italy for my obese father. I am trying to find information on seat widths so that I can book the widest but it seems the width of business-class seats are the same as economy (around 17/18 inches). Is this really the case and is there anything I can do?

Name withheld

A Increasingly, on short-haul flights the airline industry believes one size fits all – even though, given the range of weights of travellers, this is emphatically not the case.

Among the airlines that still offer business class within Europe, the trend is to use exactly the same seats throughout the aircraft. For example, on British Airways short-haul flights the A320 is fitted with identical seating. BA says: “We keep the middle seat free so you can always enjoy a guaranteed window or aisle seat and more personal space for working and relaxing.” And on BA CityFlyer jets from London City, the airline points out: “You will enjoy the same comfortable seat width and a similar seat pitch in Euro Traveller as in Club Europe.” In other words: there is no way to get a wider seat on a European flight with British Airways.

This picture is mirrored on other airlines, including ITA (the Italian national airline and successor to Alitalia). To justify charging high business-class fares, they focus on extras such as lounge access, a huge baggage allowance and complimentary onboard catering. There are rare exceptions: the evening flight from London Heathrow to Madrid on Iberia is operated by a long-haul, wide-bodied Airbus A350 with seats up to 23 inches wide. But of course this is of no use to you.

Instead, I commend Ryanair’s straightforward policy to you and your father. The Irish budget airline has more flights from the UK to Italy than any other carrier, so there should be a route that works for the trip. You simply make a booking for two tickets. Use the actual passenger’s name for the first seat; for the second, make the first name “Extra“ and the second name ”Comfort Seat”. Make sure (obviously) you pre-pay for two seats together, then check in as normal and get two boarding passes, including one carrying the name “Extra Comfort Seat”. The system appears to work well.

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