 Easyjet cancelled flight advice
Hi all. Before I go off with virtual loaded shotgun to Easyjet, can any of you that have been through similar happenings give me some pointers to what my options might be please?
Last Friday (9th) a group of 25 I'd organised (not all on same booking - in smaller groups of three and four) were due to fly out of East Mids to Cologne/Bonn. We checked in way ahead of time and when we went through security, we saw that the flight was already delayed by half an hour... "not a problem," we thought, "we can sit in the bar..." and so we did. The snow fell, it accumulated, the Prague Easyjet flight out was delayed, we sat and waited. Flight got delayed a bit more on the boards (another half hour or so) then as we got near to boarding time, we got the dreaded "please return to Easyjet desk" call on the tannoy.
I did this on behalf of the group to find that the flight was cancelled and the servisair rep was dishing out customer services telephone numbers, nothing else. At this point I was a bit concerned... we had a hotel booked in Cologne that night (full charge if cancelled within a week), an onward flight to Munich the next morning with Deutsche BA and a prebooked group train ticket to our resort in the alps from Munich. I went back through to the departure lounge and told the group, then spent an hour and a half on the phone to the Easyjet rep who frantically tried to find alternatives for us, even with other carriers. He could find nothing that would get us out there much before Monday night or Tuesday! He told me that they (Easyjet) may reschedule the flight for the morning, so I needed to call the airport first thing and find out... I found this unacceptable so went to speak to the Airport manager...
By this time, the snow had stopped, the runway was cleared and the EJ Prague flight had boarded and departed... The airport manager confirmed what I thought. The incoming Venice flight (due to take us to Cologne) had insufficient fuel to hold over EM airport whilst they cleared the runway, so detoured to Luton instead (EJ had to bus up the Venice passengers to East Mids). EJ must then have decided the flight wasn't "economically viable" to run, so pulled it. At no point did we get an official reason for flight cancellation from EJ.
We all went back to the house of a (fortunately) close living member of the group and hit the internet. We found flights with Thomsonfly out of Doncaster/Sheffield the next morning to Salzburg that left at the crack of dawn, so frantically booked tickets online for the group, fortunately managing to get all 25 passengers on the flight. This new one-way flight came to about £125 per head... We also needed to get taxis up to Doncaster/Sheffield the next morning at £20 per head. Once in Salzburg we also had to buy new train tickets to Munich, then on to our final destination at the cost of a further £150-ish for the group.
Now... I know that Easyjet claim no liability for "consequential loss" (ie hotels, on flights, etc...) in usual cases, but I'm wondering if there is some kind of clause I can trigger in this case as the cancellation happened at a point when we were sitting in departures and had already been delayed an hour. It may even have been possible to get onto another evening flight out from East Mids or a nearby airport if we had more notice...
So... can anyone please give me some tips on what we should pursue with EJ and what we should leave to our travel insurance? I'm pretty sure we're due the compensation payment (250 euros each? Or less?) Will they also be liable to pay us the £125 per head flight price (and the extra £45 we paid for ski carriage with them!) we arranged as an alternative with Thomsonfly from Doncaster/Sheffield? Will EJ refund the outward leg of our original EJ flight as well? Is it pointless trying to get them to pay for the cancelled hotel and the extra train ticket costs? Should we leave that for our travel insurance do you think?
any hints/tips gratefully received... they really screwed up our plans on this one...
*Just as an aside... First time I've ever flown with Thomsonfly and/or from Doncaster/Sheffield. Would like to say that a) Doncaster/Sheffield is a very nice little airport and b) Thomsonfly were by far the friendliest, most organised and efficient low cost carrier I've ever used. Top marks to them for doing great service on a budget. | 
