Hello, I am flying from east midlands on 16th june TCX5208/9 dep 0600 to enfidha in Tunisia, does anyone know what plane will I be on please and is it too early to know where the plane will come from before us thanks trisha

bripat,

BHX-NBE-BHX (TCX5208/9) are operated by Boeing 757-200. It's the first flight outbound for that aircraft that day. The aircraft comes in the evening before then night-stops.

Darren

thanks Darren for your quick reply .. just need to check extra legroom seats now thanks again bripat

Dazbo HT Mod wrote:

bripat,

BHX-NBE-BHX (TCX5208/9) are operated by Boeing 757-200. It's the first flight outbound for that aircraft that day. The aircraft comes in the evening before then night-stops.

Darren

Hi Darren just been on Thomas cook site to book extra legroom and on the plan it shows 38 seats ? I booked 26a /26b is it still a 757-200 im a bit lost to what aircraft it is thanks bripat

Bripat,

I'm mobile at the moment, but it was listed as a Boeing 757-200 when I looked the other day.

Darren

Delayed 5 hours last Friday and now delayed 3.5 hours on the way back from AYT to Manchester. Absolute joke. A burger to pacify us this time. Never again will I fly with Thomas Cook

Good luck finding an airline with a 100% no delay promise.

Another 'dont' fly' airline lol. Given that all airlines have delays, you'll soon run out of airlines to fly with
I've run out of UK charters and low cost carriers, based on that principle.

Cheers for your sympathy the 2 posters above. Easy for you to say when you're not sat in a grotty hotel with no clean clothes, no info on when we're leaving having basically had your holiday ruined.

All airlines have delays but Thomas Crook take the biscuit. Reps in the airport last night laughing and joking whilst we're fed a filthy burger as 'compensation'. This is not how to run a business. Sadly they'll cease to exist if this continues.

Good luck finding any other airline that would treat you to a luxury hotel with 3 course dining

Please don't take the hump kris1978. Befreetoday and Sunaddict were simply pointing out that these things happen and if you trawl the other airline threads you'll see that they all contain numerous 'never again' posts, especially the charter and no frills companies. Thomas Cook are no better nor worse than the great majority of airlines - none of them are ever completely delay free and they will all always only offer you the minimum required to comply with the law. If a delay of 3.5 hours getting home is going to ruin your holiday then best not to take the risk of flying at all in future.

I'm not meaning to sound harsh, just realistic - delays are always a risk with any airline, even scheduled ones. In my experience, yes, the big scheduled carriers do tend deal with these things better than companies like Thomas Cook, Thomson or Monarch but not always and their ticket prices are also usually much higher as well. The real costs of air travel have fallen and made it something that the majority of people can now routinely afford but the 'price' we are paying for this is that companies now leave themselves very little wriggle room in an attempt to keep costs down. They do not keep planes sitting idle so that they can be drafted into service at short notice when things go wrong with other planes in their fleet. I've never experienced anything as bad as Dazbo's 25hr delay on one trip but delays are a fact of life when it comes to air travel these days. We either accept that or don't fly. This is why within Europe I'm now a huge fan of train travel but even ultra-efficient DeutscheBahn was late enough last summer for me to miss a connection in Cologne for Brussels with the result that we then missed our Eurostar connection to London but it won't stop me using them again because their service is usually very reliable. It was on the way home, we'd had a great time in Berlin and the fare was ridiculously cheap. All round still a much nicer experience than flying to Berlin in cattle class even with the delay.

SM

While sympathising a little with kris1978 for the flight delays, I agree with the other members – we get very cheap flights these days, and delays are a fact of life. I had eight hours delay in January this year going to Cancun with Thomson – but they DIDN’T provide ANY vouchers or meals because
they had “texted me about the delayed departure” on the day of the flight.
I was unhappy at the time and posted about it – but in the end had a great holiday so I forgive them!

And previously I’ve had 24 hours delay in 2010 coming back from Costa Rica (again with Thomson) and 34 hours delay in 2008 (yes 34!) coming back from Trivandrum, India (again Thomson).
Both those horrific delays, Thomson did do their very best to look after everyone.

As I’ve posted previously – if the EU compensation scheme really starts to take effect – then things will change. I reckon the airlines should themselves take out delay protection insurance policies and THEY should AUTOMATICALLY payout standard compensation to all delayed passengers
– funded by the insurance.
Thus poor airlines with bad records would be crucified by high insurance premiums.
Airlines trying to manage with airplanes too old or unreliable, or not enough planes to get flexibility would suffer most – as they should.
Air fares would rise – a bit, though how much is difficult to guess – and I reckon charter travel would become more concentrated at larger airports for flexibility, with small regional airports losing business.

And, personally, I’d be very sad to see Thomas Cook go out of business – we do need the only remaining large competitor with Thomson/TUI in order to keep package prices from skyrocketing.

By the way SMa – slightly off topic – have you got yourself a copy of the book “Man in Seat 61” details about rail travel across the planet? Poundland are discounting this 16 quid book for just one pound at present.

SMa wrote:

I've never experienced anything as bad as Dazbo's 25hr delay on one trip

Make that 52 hours!

I have to agree with the above. While delays are inconvenient, they are a fact of travel, be it by road, rail or sea. It's not exclusive to any particular airline or mode of travel. Try travelling down the M6 or around the M25, you'll rarely get to your destination without some kind of traffic delay. It's not something airlines like either as it costs them too, they don't do it on purpose and the cause of the delay is not always the fault of the airline. It can be for any number of reasons or a combination of factors.

kris1978 wrote:

Delayed 5 hours last Friday and now delayed 3.5 hours on the way back from AYT to Manchester. Absolute joke. A burger to pacify us this time. Never again will I fly with Thomas Cook

While I sympathise with the delays you experienced, we've all been there and are inevitable at some time if you travel regularly, especially at busy times. It sounds like you were given the required meal voucher for a delay over 3 hours so there's little more the airline can do. No airline runs to schedule 100% of the time, these things happen and aren't always in the hands of the airline. One thing everyone needs to accept with travel, delays will happen from time to time even though every effort is made to keep to schedule.

Just to put your delay in to perspective, latest figures for 2012 show that 73.04% of TCX flights departed within 15 minutes of scheduled departure times, 11.14% 1+ hour late and 3.13% > 3 hours. The average delay was 25.39 minutes putting TCX in 2nd place in the charter punctuality table behind Thomson Airways, with an average delay of 12.46 minutes (source: Flightsontime.info).

Darren

I have to agree really, I would never exclude an airline on the basis of one bad flight. It would be just as easy for it to have happened with another airline, so kind of pot luck. I also wonder how many stick to their I am never going to fly with such and such airline again, as realistically there is not that huge a choice, especially for those that have favourite destinations or are restricted to regional airports, many chose on cost alone and go for who offers the cheapest deal so it can be self defeating to exclude a complete company.Travel delays of all sorts are a fact of living on an over crowded busy planet. I'm sure the airlines would like everything to run in a seamless manner as well, they hardly want their staff being ranted at or their company being badmouthed, many situations are out with their control even though it is frustrating for passengers.

It's not one bad flight though is it. We're now up to a 16 hour delay with no information on when we'll be departing. We were supposed to fly at 2340 yesterday. We were all picked up from our hotels when our aircraft hadn't even left the UK. What was the point?

We then arrived at the airport to find our flight had an estimated departure time of 0305. We weren't told this en route to the airport even though the reps knew. How is that anyway to treat your customers? To compound that all we received was a cold burger and drink (no hot drinks allowed!) which we weren't allowed to claim until after 2330. Our aircraft then arrived at 0225 only to strike a bird on landing. I understand these things happen and safety is and MUST be the priority. We were told it could be fixed but by that point the pilot would be out of hours so we were sent to a hotel. It was left to the pilot to tell us all this. not a rep in sight. This hotel is NOT luxury in response to the poster above.

So we all awoke this morning expecting to be told our plane had been fixed and as soon as our pilot had completed his 12 hour rest period we'd be off. No. They are now flying an engineer over on this afternoon's B'ham to Antalya flight. This flight is DELAYED and not due in till 1655. We're been told we have an estimated departure time of 2100. No pressure on the engineer then. We are being bussed to the airport at 1800 even though there's no guarantee the plane will be fixed. If we do take off at 2100 that's a 22 hour delay.

I apologise if I offended anyone earlier but please appreciate I've had 4 hours sleep in 2 days. I just don't understand why with a delay like this we can't be 'rescued' by a spare plane. It seems to me the capacity planning at TC is poor. There have been delayed flights for the last 2 weeks due to various issues.

May I finish this off by commending the pilot for his honesty and the 2 reps today for their handling of a volatile situation. We all just want to go home! We have no clean clothes and are fed up.

Kris1978
Your problems in Antalya are now starting to sound really horrible. I sympathise.

Here’s the link to CAA information about compensation you may be due from Thomas Cook airline.
(They will try to fob you off telling you to claim on your travel insurance – but make sure you get the delay letter that they must provide to every passenger)

http://www.caa.co.uk/default.aspx?catid=2211&pageid=14023

Since at 400 euros per passenger the compensation cost to Thomas Cook might total one hundred thousand euros – I’d guess they might want to challenge claims!
Note that the CAA says flights from outside the EU into an EU airport ARE covered by this.
It will be interesting to hear what happens if any of you folk claim.

kris1978 wrote:

It's not one bad flight though is it. We're now up to a 16 hour delay with no information on when we'll be departing. We were supposed to fly at 2340 yesterday. We were all picked up from our hotels when our aircraft hadn't even left the UK. What was the point?

We then arrived at the airport to find our flight had an estimated departure time of 0305. We weren't told this en route to the airport even though the reps knew. How is that anyway to treat your customers? To compound that all we received was a cold burger and drink (no hot drinks allowed!) which we weren't allowed to claim until after 2330. Our aircraft then arrived at 0225 only to strike a bird on landing. I understand these things happen and safety is and MUST be the priority. We were told it could be fixed but by that point the pilot would be out of hours so we were sent to a hotel. It was left to the pilot to tell us all this. not a rep in sight. This hotel is NOT luxury in response to the poster above.

So we all awoke this morning expecting to be told our plane had been fixed and as soon as our pilot had completed his 12 hour rest period we'd be off. No. They are now flying an engineer over on this afternoon's B'ham to Antalya flight. This flight is DELAYED and not due in till 1655. We're been told we have an estimated departure time of 2100. No pressure on the engineer then. We are being bussed to the airport at 1800 even though there's no guarantee the plane will be fixed. If we do take off at 2100 that's a 22 hour delay.

I apologise if I offended anyone earlier but please appreciate I've had 4 hours sleep in 2 days. I just don't understand why with a delay like this we can't be 'rescued' by a spare plane. It seems to me the capacity planning at TC is poor. There have been delayed flights for the last 2 weeks due to various issues.

May I finish this off by commending the pilot for his honesty and the 2 reps today for their handling of a volatile situation. We all just want to go home! We have no clean clothes and are fed up.

Hi Kris

Apologies as I didn't mean to sound so unsympathetic in my post above, as you are having a nightmare getting home. I remember being delayed on a flight due to Lanzarote and stuck in Gatwick for 10 hours with a nine month old baby and a two year old, it was hell.

I guess they themselves often just do not know things, also they might have to take strategic business decisions like taking you to the airport as the costs of keeping you in the high star hotel you were in for another night were just too expensive or maybe that hotel had another infux of guests due - i suppose i am saying that there often be thngs we just don't know in the equation.

Anyway I will stop drivelling on and hope that you manage to leave at a reasonable time this evening, you must be exhausted. For what ukbill is saying above it sounds like you will be due some compensation, not that it makes things better at the time.

Doe

Here's news of a case this year where Thomas Cook lost the case on a flight delay and actually were ordered by a court to pay the compensation.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2270725/Now-sue-flight-delays-Landmark-ruling-mean-payouts-hold-ups-3-hours.html

Lots of airlines are now a bit worried by this, and now also there are already a number of no win/no fee legal firms joining the game assisting folk making claims for flight delays.

Hi all, we're looking to go to Goa next feb time, Can anyone tell me who flies direct (preferably) and where from or where to find the best deals and when these come out. Cheers.