If your delay is expected to to more than a few hours, you'll be issued with meal vouches after 3 hours. Beyond that, or if the delay is known to be lengthy, you'll be taken to a hotel for the day / night depending on the length of the delay. I've explained the reason you need to be at the airport at the usual time and why you haven't had a call or text on the Thomson Airways thread. Latest information will be given when you check-in tomorrow as it can change between now and then. Regardless of where you are flying, you are flying with a european carrier and are therefore governed by UK and EU law. With any luck, things won't be as bad as you expect in the morning.

These things happen, there's nothing you can do about it. Many of us have been in similar postions. While it's not a great start to your holiday, don't let it put a dampner on it and spoil what remains of it. 9 hours isn't great, I spent longer than that in Abu Dhabi airport last Septemer, but it's not the end of the world either.

Darren

I think maybe someone from Thomson reads HT.
Or the First Choice FB page where I also commented.
I have just had a text message from Thomson Airline telling me the new departure time of TOM196 will be 17.30.
SO it means more than an eight hour delay.
But they now want folk to checkin just 3 hours before the NEW time.
I guess this is their way of avoiding paying for flight delay meals etc.

This is my first post but i have joined especially to tell you that my 17 year old daughter is due to come home on the TOM 123 from Cancun today. She was due to land in Manchester tomorrow morning but has been told this morning to expect AT LEAST a 22 hour delay. Luckily they have just been told to stay in the hotel and not to vacate the room so she is happy The airport website says it is due to land on Thursday 01:00 but this is not what she has been told!! Hope this helps anyone xx

You may be entitled to cash compensation in addition to "care" if the delay is more than 3 hours at destination under EU regulation 261/2004 unless it is due to "extraordinary circumstances". Technical faults have been deemed not to be extraordinary circumstances.

You will need to get the reason for the delay in writing from Thomson's.

MORE INFORMATION HERE

I know i will get a lot of flack but this is what happens when using an old fleet and pushing it to the limit sorry this is not just a Thomson Airways problem it is across the board with holiday flights.However i seem to think Thomson Airways had this problem last year!!.

qatarman wrote:

I know i will get a lot of flack but this is what happens when using an old fleet

To be fair, they do have new aircraft on order (and have had for some time) so are addressing the age 'problem'. You can't blame Thomson for the dealys by Boeing. You mention an aging fleet, but as you've seen with the current 787's, even new aircraft have their problems proving age has little bearing on reliability. They have technical problems with 2 aircraft and are doing the best they can to cover the situation. It's just bad luck that two aircraft had problems at the same time. These things happen.

Darren

Just to let you all know that my daughter has now been told that they will take off from Cancun at 11am (5pm our time) and will land at Manchester at 02.30 on Thursday morning

Now I'm at Manchester Airport awaiting the horribly delayed TOM 196 to Cancun. And, as predictdd becayse Thomson say they notified thechange by text they are refusing to provid delay meals to folk who didnt arrive here at 6am. What a lovely customer friendly attitude.

Sorry to say ukbill Thomson customer service went out the window when it was taken over by TUI.With only 2 main tour companies now they dont give a hoot.

Yes. Someone called Amarita at Thomson 24-7 has just emailed me to say that if they have notified the delay then they do not provide "welfare" to delayed customers. ie no meals or refreshments evrn though the flight is 8 hours late!!!
Surely this isnt legal??

ukbill wrote:

Yes. Someone called Amarita at Thomson 24-7 has just emailed me to say that if they have notified the delay then they do not provide "welfare" to delayed customers. ie no meals or refreshments evrn though the flight is 8 hours late!!!
Surely this isnt legal??

They told you to check in 3 hours prior to the new departure time, so why should they provide refreshments? If you had been told to check in as originally planned, that would be different.

So what you are saying sunaddict is that if an airline just texts passengers 11hrs before scheduled checkin of 6.20am then that gets them out of their european law obligations to look after folk with a nearly 9 hour flight delay?

Bill
If you're advised of a new departure time of 17:30 and advised to check in 3hrs prior to that then you won't be eligible for a meal or vouchers for the equivalent unless the plane is delayed after 17:30 (usually it has to be a delay of more than 3hrs).

For those passengers who did not get contacted (ie: those who didn't leave numbers they could be texted on I assume) and were unaware of the later check-in, then they should be provided with some kind of assistance.

I'm just glad I'm not going away til April - I really feel for the poor s*ds affected by all these horrendous delays - looks like ukbill got away at 17:53 - 8.5 hours late and Girlson Tour's daughter is finally on her way back - but on a substitute plane, a Thos Cook 767.

slightly off topic ... I recall many years ago, we booked a i week holiday to Corfu (Honeymoon) Checked in for the 1.30pm flight at Gatwick ... delay after delay followed until eventually around 11pm at night were told that our flight had been diverted to Luton and would have to be transported over there to board the flight!! Everybody that had bought Duty Free had to return them and recied their money back. One coach was send to pick up passengers, leaving 6 of us still stuck at Gatwick to await a further coach, finally arriving at Luton around 4am to be greeted by amember of TC cabin crew who ushered us through to the aircraft. Upon entering the aircraft we received a round of applause from fellow passengers who had obviously been waiting sometime for our arrival!

It gets better .... arrived at Corfu to be told flight delayed again, only this time we had to wait for the aircraft to arrive from Gatwick and upon landing in Corfu picked up passengers who should have been on an earlier flight to us. Had to wait for this aircraft to fly back to Gatwick, reload, fly back to Corfu before picking us up. As if that wasn't a bad enough experience, due to fog we had to land at Luton (where we sat for nearly 2 hours) while waiting for the fog to clear before taking off and returning to Gatwick ... a Honeymoon to remember and not for the right reasons LOL!!

.... and we never received a penny compensation!!

Regards,
Pat

But with true British grit, you STILL go on holiday!!!

Yes Mobor One .... I'm a glutton for punishment LOL!!

Regards,
Pat