Hi gazboro! I'm afraid that in my opinion, you do not have any redress against your TO concerning the fact that your flight returned to Manchester rather than EMA. I know it hurts to be told this, but really it's up to you to read ALL the small print, especially if you are booking a last minute bargain that is likely to be 'left overs' from regular holidays.

As regards your outward delay, and any costs incurred trying to get back to EMA, I'm afraid you'll have to wait for more informed members to post.

Hope that this didn't ruin your holiday and apart from the travel, the rest of your stay was happy.

Your rights regarding the delay are summarised here. The first thing you need to know is how far it is from East Midlands to Gran Canaria and some idea of why you were delayed. It is probably a bit borderline, the actual EU regulation adds a bit of wording about what the airline might have reasonably expected the delay to be. If the plane was 4 hours late leaving the origin of it's inward journey then they should reasonably expected a delay of the length you suffered long before it happened. If on the other hand, the plane was there when it should have been and a fault was discovered at the last minute, then an engineer looked at it and said 2 hours, then the part was wrong ("give me another 30 minutes") and finally you had to wait for an ATC slot, the airline could say that they genuinely didn't expect the delay to be that long. And yes, I have sat through that scenario!

Incidentally, if you do have a genuine claim the airline has broken another regualtion because they are required to advise you at the time - there is an investigation under way into the widespread abuse of that rule by most airlines.

As to the return flight, I've just had a mooch at the website http://www.thomascook.co.uk and then looked under Deals and selected East Midlands which is what I assume you did. From the list I clicked on a few and every one came up with both flight details on the next screen. And none of them came back to a different airport.

This raise two possible answers. Either it did say Manchester and you didn't read it. In which case you never had a case.

Or, there is a system fault and it is showing the home arrival airport to be the same as the departure wherever it is coming to. Now, if you had printed the screen off that would have proved your case and they would be in all sorts of trouble. But if you haven't got the evidence you don't stand a chance unless you can find someone else who bought the same deal and did get a print. Lesson to be learnt from this is never press the final accept button until you have seen everything you think your booking on screen and have printed it off.

And if you think EMA and MAN is a bad mix, somewhere on this site last year there was a complaint of Glasgow and Stansted being mixed!!

A lot of tour operators mix and match departure & return airports to accommodations to put last minute packages together. It's a way of filling dead seats & empty "guaranteed" rooms.

It is up to the passenger to ensure they have checked all of the details at the time of making the reservation or, if booking by telephone or with an agent - to ensure any errata's (last minute notes or changes) have been confirmed with the passenger.

If you made the reservation online - you should have received a confirmation email of some sort and maybe you will find all the flight details contained in it. If the confirmation does not tell show you were flying MAN to LPA on your outbound and LPA to EMA on you inbound journeys, then - you can look at taking it up with the tour operator.

Good luck.

CwB

There are lots of "mix and match" flights, especially with TC, it's quite normal. I've seen lots in the past, some fantastic deals where I would fly out from NCL and say return BMX. I've never done this, but possibly would if it was the other way round, flying back to my home airport. It just depends on the deal, but would have to be special for me to do this. I agree it's sometimes not easy to spot and needs checking if booking online. In a shop or over the phone you should be told, especially when confirming flight details.

Robby