Initial details of Thomson Airlines Complaint for flight TOM4483

Friday 16th May 2014; 17:55

This is a quick blog (sorry, never done one before....) to provide an on-line presence to keep anyone who was out of the loop on the Thomson Airlines TOM4483 nightmare flight from Palma to Gatwick scheduled for departure 15th May 2014 at 11am (09:00 GMT) and which arrived at 09:11am local time (08:11 GMT) on 16th May 2014.

Some people at the airport were asking about the potential compensation available. All credit to www.moneysavingexpert.com for putting most of this into a usable format!

Distance of flight: 1310km

The delay was over 3 hours and was the fault of the airline (the initial technical failure is apparently classified as the airline's fault, however their decision to divert our rescue plane to Luton to collect an engine part for another aircraft added 4 hours to the delay, so this cannot be anything but the fault of the airline!)

Compensation Value: £210 per passenger (so if you had a party of 3, this would be £630 total)

Compensation Format: Cash is required but they might offer you more in vouchers and you ever want to travel with them again, that's for you to negotiate and decide whether it's a good deal for you. If you want to go down the negotiation route, I recommend deciding what your ideal, realistic and minimum acceptable settlements are well in advance and consider anything around your ideal as a win.

Good info:  http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/travel/flight-delays#whatcounts

Distance calculation provided by www.webflyer.com

Details on how to make a claim are here http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/travel/flight-delays#stepOne but it might be worth waiting for a couple of days whilst we all get our ducks in a row. I personally will be appealing to them for far more than my statutory compensation.

I have spoken to Alex Matcham at Thomson after flight services this afternoon (after a well deserved 3 hour kip!) and she has allegedly spoken to Flight Services who will apparently email me a replacement delay confirmation letter with the correct information, or as close to this as can be managed, detailed.

if anyone wants to email me, use rskegg@hotmail.co.uk , I will check this once per day, work commitments accepting.