SMa

agreed that in this sort of mistake they may have a hard job explaining why they didn't spot it until departure day but the point of law they are suggesting is that THEY can void contracts if THEY have made a mistake and there is no cut off point as long as they can explain themselves. And there a plenty of mistakes they could make! Voiding a contract means you are saying it was never valid -and if it was never valid any references to compensation are irrelevant.

If true, their argument would work 2 ways. We've had a few queries from people who have made a mistake in entering dates into an online booking form and have been unable to cancel when they realised, so using this logic from ABTA they can say I'm voiding this contract because I've made a mistake and I'm not paying you. No prizes for guessing what the tour operator or ABTA would say to that!

This brings us back to the original reason why I joined HT. In early 2007 Airtours sold me a flight for June, just a couple of weeks into the season for that flight. When they were about to run it for the first time they realised it was scheduled for the wrong time and the airport would be shut! In my case they had just over 2 weeks notice but some people may have only got a few days. What ABTA are saying is that they could have voided all the contracts and dumped everyone. What they actually did was retime it to something useless and say their T&Cs allowed this. I was told by trading standards that in this case I could void the contract because of their mistake (which is why I know what it means!). Airtours argued, but they paid up in the end. And I'm still around, unlike them!