My ill son got a raw deal on his refund – can you help?

Q My son has been recently hospitalised and unfortunately is too ill to go on holiday from 2 to 10 June this year to Turkey. The package holiday cost £687 but he has been offered a refund of only £230 through his travel agent. I feel this is unjust! Can you help?

Name supplied

A I am sorry to hear about your son’s health and I hope he makes a good recovery. The standard advice – which he may have already have been offered – is to claim on travel insurance. I infer from your enquiry that, for whatever reason, that is not a possible avenue. (As I mentioned in my answer to yesterday’s question, taking out insurance at the same time as paying for a holiday is the best plan; but I recognise that in many cases this does not happen.)

Nevertheless, you and your son have a reasonable case for feeling you have been treated unjustly with a potential loss of over £450. The key is that he booked a package holiday, with flights and accommodation arranged in a single purchase. That makes the trip subject to the Package Travel Regulations 2018, an excellent body of law that provides extensive consumer protection. In particular your son has the right to “transfer the package travel contract” to anyone who is able to take the holiday instead of him. He must give at least a week’s notice, and the travel company is allowed to charge a fee – though this must simply reflect the cost of making the name change. Many firms charge £50 per person. Even with the fee, it is plainly worth seeing if friends or family are able to take the holiday off his hands for a mutually agreeable sum.

You or your son should remind the travel agent of the existence of this rule (it’s article 9 of the regulations) and perhaps politely enquire why the option was not suggested in the first place. One possible objection is that if flights are booked with a budget airline, that company’s change fees will amount to hundreds of pounds. My reading of the Package Travel Regulations is that inflated charges are not legally sustainable in this context, but your son might have to resort to law to test the strength of this defence. Good luck.

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Q Can you find out why British Airways flights are still suspended to Bangkok, and if they're likely to return in the summer schedule please?

Colette

A For decades Bangkok was a key destination for British Airways from London Heathrow: initially as one of the Southeast Asian stops along the way to Australia and New Zealand, then as a standalone destination. (For a short while you could even fly with BA from Manchester to the Thai capital with continuing service to Hong Kong.) But at the start of the Covid pandemic, British Airways suspended the Heathrow-Bangkok route. There is no possibility that it will return this summer: BA is already fully committed to the peak season and there is no place for the Thai capital.

Looking further ahead, I cannot envisage that route resuming any time soon – if ever. The British Airways Heathrow operation is focused on premium cabins, and there is simply not sufficient demand to fill First, Club World and World Traveller Plus at profitable rates.

Unlike Singapore and Hong Kong, Bangkok is overwhelmingly a budget leisure destination. Strong competition from other airlines delivers tourists to the city and other parts of Thailand. Thai Airways and the Taiwanese airline, Eva Air, compete from Heathrow to Bangkok, while Tui flies from Manchester direct to the holiday island of Phuket.

The majority of UK visitors to Thailand, though, travel on the Gulf-based airlines – Emirates, Etihad and Qatar Airways – which together offer vast amounts of capacity out of the UK via their hubs. Emirates, for example, has no fewer than five flights a day between its base in Dubai and Bangkok. It also serves Phuket, as does Qatar Airways.

Given the wide range of options, about the only people who will be aggrieved that British Airways no longer serves Bangkok are likely to be members of the Avios frequent-flyer scheme who would like to redeem their points for tickets or upgrades to Bangkok. Singapore may be a suitable alternative gateway.

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Q Myself and my wife have booked a cruise for October 2024. I wanted to get insurance in place as soon as possible as we both have medical conditions, but I have not been able to find a policy. What do you advise?

Gordon S

A The best route to find a suitable policy will be through the British Insurance Brokers Association's Travel Medical Insurance Directory. This will connect you to insurance professionals who will, in time, be able to find a suitable policy – at a price. My initial investigation suggests that, as you found, it is difficult at present to find a policy for travellers with pre-existing medical conditions for trips so far into the future.

There are some journeys within the European Union and Switzerland for which, after due consideration, you might rationally choose not to insure. But for almost all other international trips, travel insurance is essential. For cruises, in particular, suitable insurance is a prerequisite and you may not even be able to board the ship without providing a copy of your policy. Medical treatment and evacuation from a ship can be extremely expensive and the cruise line will want to know that you are fully covered.

Travel insurance provides much more than emergency cover, of course. Crucially, if you are making a high-value commitment to a future trip, you need cancellation insurance to begin from the moment you hand over a deposit. If you booked direct with the cruise line, then the responsibility for understanding the limitations of insurance rests with you. But many travellers book through an agent. A good travel agent who has your best interests at heart would make this absolutely clear. While offering advice can be legally tricky, she or he should have explained that you will be taking a significant risk by handing over any money for a future cruise without full cover.

If you did book through an agent, my blunt assessment is that whoever persuaded you to make a substantial financial commitment to a cruise so far ahead of departure has done you a disservice. I suggest you ask them what precisely they had in mind – and set them to work to find a policy that will meet your needs. Be warned, though, that travel insurance might cost almost as much as the voyage.

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Q I took advantage of my Irish ancestry to obtain an Irish passport during the Brexit debacle. If I book a holiday in the European Union, is there any reason why I couldn’t travel out to the EU country using my Irish passport and back to the UK using my British one?

Kevan T

A Lucky you. The decision to leave the European Union, and the hard Brexit the government subsequently chose, has made life much more complicated for those of us with only British passports. I am glad to hear you have the good fortune to qualify for a passport issued by an EU country. Anyone who travels to Europe and is entitled by ancestry to a passport from one of the 27 member states – or wider Schengen area countries, including Norway, Iceland and Switzerland – should apply.

As the UK requested when leaving the European Union, British passport holders face multiple hurdles. These include strict limits on passport validity (no older than 10 years on the day of entry to the EU, no less than three months remaining on return); slower immigration queues on arrival; and strict limits on the length of stay and activities while in Schengen area nations.

For travellers with passports issued by Ireland, these hassles are not reciprocal on entry to the UK. You will be able to use the automatic eGates when returning to Britain with your Irish passport. It is valid up to and including the expiry date. You will face no limits on your length of stay in the UK. So the obvious answer is to use your Irish passport exclusively. Leaving the British one at home will also handily eliminate the risk that you could lose both while on holiday abroad.

But to answer your question directly: it is perfectly permissible to travel out with the Irish passport and back with the British one. You would, though, need to be sure that you check in online for each flight with the appropriate Advance Passenger Information details. Budget airlines can be particularly pernickety about checking passports against the details you supplied at check-in. Another good reason to stick with that Irish passport.

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