Travel questions: Is there any point planning a holiday and will easyJet go bust before I receive a refund?

Q Would you recommend not booking any holidays or flights this year? End of summer, October half term or Christmas holidays?

Fiona H

A I strenuously recommend planning holidays and flights this year; I just suggest you hold off booking for now. I hope I can change that advice soon. Part of the joy of travel is the anticipation, and sadly right now many of us are living with no fixed plans for holidays. Until the pendulum starts to swing back, with governments loosening restrictions, leisure travel is on hold.

The Foreign Office actually intensified the uncertainty over the weekend, by quietly announcing that the former fixed-term advice against non-essential travel – due to expire on 16 April – had been extended. I had been expecting the government’s no-go warning to stay in place for another two weeks or perhaps even a month. I wasn’t expecting this, though: “We advise against all non-essential travel. Indefinitely.”

That indeterminate end makes life very difficult for travel firms. Previously they could carry out “rolling cancellations”, telling customers that everything is cancelled until 16 April, and reasonably keeping other customers on hold. They will now receive a barrage of requests from holidaymakers requesting refunds for bookings in May, June and perhaps into the main summer months of July and August.

Individual companies will set there own policies for announcing cancellations; I anticipate many saying everything is off for April, perhaps through May as well.

This is a slightly longwinded way of saying: nothing is certain. I am confident summer holidays will be back to something like normal by the second half of August. October half-term and Christmas/new year will see plenty of leisure travellers, too.

So why not book now, when the travel industry needs as much support as possible? Simply because I do not know what shape the holiday business will be in when this wretched time is over: what flight capacity there will be, how many hotels will survive, and whether any lingering bans on foreigners will prevail.

I hope that in a month everything will be clearer, and you and I can start making firm bookings. Until then, make plans aplenty, as detailed as you like, and enjoy the anticipation that comes with a travel wish list.

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Q We are supposed to be in Crete today, three days into a family holiday. But easyJet cancelled the flights nearly three weeks ago. I went online immediately and requested a full refund – which I gather was rather easier then than it is now – and was told in a confirmation email that this would take seven days

Now I’m getting nervous, particularly since I saw owner Stelios Haji-Ioannou saying easyJet could run out of cash by August. Should I instigate a claim under Section 75?

Name supplied

A Sorry that you are not in Crete right now: April and May are ideal months to visit the largest and (for me) most appealing Greek island. As it is, you can count yourself fortunate that you were among the first wave of Easter holiday flights to be cancelled by easyJet. That means you were able to seek your money back before the airline decided it would disable the option to request a cash refund online, and instead steer passengers towards a voucher (much better for easyJet, significantly less favourable for the traveller).

While it promised a refund in a week, and is now two weeks over that deadline, I believe easyJet can legally argue that it doesn’t have to give you the money back until seven days after the flight was to depart – which gives the airline another few days.

At that point you are fully entitled to call the credit card company and instigating a chargeback under Section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act.

However, I suggest you give it a few more weeks. Airlines have suddenly had to switch themselves from businesses set up to fly millions of people safely around Europe and the world into firms that hand back money to to legions of disappointed passengers.

I have bookings for this month that were cancelled by British Airways and Ryanair. I have asked both for a full refund (a battle with BA, trivial with Ryanair) but I won’t be troubling them again for a few weeks.

After Stelios’s warning on Monday about easyJet running out of cash, the airline said it had arranged a couple of billion pounds in financing and I am confident it will certainly be flying in the summer and paying all the dues it owes. If I am wrong, though, then Section 75 will be your friend.

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Q As a chauffeur, am I allowed to drive a passenger home to the south of France as they can’t get a flight for nine days? If so, will it be as easy for me to get back to England on return?

Shaun B

A Without wishing to deprive you of a no-doubt lucrative gig, I urge against this whole notion. For a start, I am not sure where your client is searching for flights, but I would commend British Airways. Through the coronavirus crisis, BA is flying near-daily from Heathrow to Nice (and even offering bargain £43 one-way fares on 12 and 14 April to the city serving the French Riviera).

If that is not convenient, there are also daily BA flights serving Lyon, Geneva and Paris – from where trains are departing to destinations such as Avignon, Marseille and Montpellier. (Some are leaving direct from Charles de Gaulle airport, but for most it will be necessary to travel in to the French capital and take a train from the Gare de Lyon.) Eurostar provides another possible route, with a daily train from London St Pancras to Paris Nord.

Your passenger is allowed to enter France if they are French, or a UK national who normally lives in France and is returning to their principal residence. They must complete the necessary “attestation” from the French authorities confirming that their travel is an absolutely necessity. This is a document that can be downloaded from the internet and must be filled in before the journey.

Were your client to decide that Shaun’s chauffeur drive is the only way to go, there are regular shuttles through the Channel Tunnel from Folkestone on Eurotunnel to Calais. But I am not sure that the French frontier police who are stationed on the Kent side of the channel would see the merit of a chauffeur-driven journey to the south of France when so many other options are available. But in the unlikely event you were let in, there would be no problem returning to the UK.

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