You have made that point already. But that doesn't mean that the website is misleading. "Overlooking" doesn't mean "right next to". You made some incorrect assumptions - including not only about the location, it seems. As a piece of consumer advice I'd suggest you research your holiday choices a bit more so your expectations are not disappointed. In this day and age, there's really no excuse not to. As Bankfodder says, the fact that you've can show in writing a commitment to a refund if you choose to leave seems to be the strongest point of your claim.

You do realise those two facts are not mutually exclusive?

In fairness to the owners, the website does make it clear exactly where the "cabins" are (and the cottage): https://emble.org/location It just takes a moment's browsing to find.

I did warn about this in post 18: the way that Ryanair structure their company means you have to sue them using the European Small Claims procedure. Which is more complicated, unfortunately, but not impossible. Of course the ESCP may cease to apply soon, so I'd get a wriggle on!

Yes this is right. I did tell you about this in my earlier post above. I don’t think you can use English courts to sue a company based outside of the UK, except by using the European Small Claims Procedure (or whatever it’s called).

The insurance might be a red-herring. Often policies don't cover for missed or delayed flights - or pay a small amount if they do. They certainly don't pay out for statutory compensation under Regulation 261/04. You definitely need to claim that from the airline directly. What exactly does your policy say? You should be claiming: The 261/04 sum - which is €400 per passenger The cost of the additional flights that you had to pay for (or the difference in costs between your original fare and the subsequent one, if Ryaniar have refunded you already) Any reasonable meal and accommodation costs endured during the delay These are all due to you under Regulation 261/04. I recall that there is a complexity with Ryaniar, involving the fact that their HQ is in Ireland not the UK. But you don't want to sue in the Irish courts. This means you have to serve a more complex claim - I forget what it's called now. One reason why it might be quicker and easier to go through the ADR scheme in the first instance (you can always sue later if you get the wrong outcome, as it's not binding on you).

So contrary to what you sometimes read on the internet, there's no part of the Regulation 261/04 (or the subsequent binding case law, of which there's quite a bit) that says "knock on" delays cannot be extraordinary circumstances. The legal test, which is set out (I think) in the Wallentin case is that the cause of the delay must be extraordinary AND the airline must then have taken all reasonable measures to mitigate the delay. If either test fails, you are due compensation. A 30 hours delay does not sound reasonable in these circumstances, especially for what is presumably a short-haul route. Pursuing the case on the Small Claims Track is unlikely to be speedy - unless Ryanair concede as soon as you serve papers (unlikely I think). It might be quicker and cheaper to use the CAA-approved Alternative Dispute Resolution process in the first instance. Even if you don't win, this doesn't stop you from going to the Small Claims (which in truth can still be a bit of a lottery on this). I wrote a guide to the law on this, and what passengers should do, a few years back after I successfully sued Monarch Airlines. You can probably still find it on the internet by Googling Vauban and flight delay guide. Good luck!

I doubt this will do it, but no harm in giving it a whirl. You’ll probably have to initiate legal proceedings before they take you seriously. If they don’t budge from a LBA, and you don’t fancy the hassle of starting a legal claim (which will take many months to come to court and for which you’ll need to pay a fee), I see Wizzair subscribe to a dispute resolution service, which should be quicker and cheaper for you. It’s ADR Resolution in this case. If you don’t get the result you’re after, you can still take them to court.

This is nonsense. But you may need to take them to court before they settle. Plenty of UK and European case law that technical problems like this are not "extraordinary circumstances" and the Montreal Convention is a big red herring! Shameful behaviour.

If you bought insurance you ought to have been given a policy document - that should tell you how to claim. I’m pretty sure that it will be a different process than just writing to customer service. The document might even have a special number to call for advice on how to submit your claim. Do you have this paperwork?

It feels like we’re going round in circles a bit here. Can you confirm: a) whether you have made a claim to the Hoseasons insurance policy yet (not a complaint to Hoseasons directly); b) whether you have, or can get, a copy of the letter that the school photocopied, that could can send in with your insurance claim? Everything else is just distraction, at the moment.

Well I think that one could reasonably infer that if, in the professional opinion of the doctor, a child is not fit for school and may present a risk of contagion, it can be reasonably inferred that the child is not fit to vacation for the same reasons. There may be an additional cost to secure a second doctor's letter, so I would proceed with a copy of the letter to the school in the first instance. It would be perverse, frankly, to suggest that a doctor's letter confirming a suspected prognosis of a contagious pox is somehow insufficient for the purpose of honouring the claim. So I would just send that off - in the event that the insurers are difficult, then Snowdragon's daughter should be able to secure a further bespoke letter.

So if your daughter already has a letter from the doctor, confirming that the children should be kept off school, then why can't you supply this as evidence to the Hoseason's insurance process? Unless I am missing anything, that seems to be the obvious thing to do.

I am sorry to hear of your wife’s illness and hopes she makes a swift recovery. I’m afraid that most air fares are not refundable - you pay a significant extra premium for a ticket that is. Buying through an agent also complicates things. Personally I always prefer to purchase a flight direct from the airline so that if there is an issue you don’t have to go through a third party but can plead your case directly. Hopefully you will have bought travel insurance given the significant costs of the flights. If so, you should be able to make a claim on the policy. If not, I’m not sure you have many options, except to ask the airline directly for a gesture of goodwill.

Unless you are on benefits, it will cost you about £150 for a claim worth between £500 and a Grand (claim fee plus hearing fee). As King says, the other side pays for this if you win. If you don’t win, you’re £150 down. I am not a professional in this field, but I have a lot of experience of helping people in your situation. I also won my own case against an airline - which went all the way to the hearing. If you pursue this in the courts, there is definitely a chance (not a infinitesimal one either) that you get a District Judge not familiar with EU Regulation 261/04 or the binding case law, and that you get the wrong result. In my experience - and this is where a I think King is wrong - airlines do not simply “give up” when you send a LBA. They wait until you file a court claim, and pay the hearing fee. Then they usually - but not always - settle. But as well as carrying some risk, this process also takes ages. Probably six months, or more depending on court pressures in your part of the world. So I really would not recommend this course of action, when there is a pretty good arbitration alternative offered which - as I understand it - has a reasonably good record of dealing with claims fairly, at minimal cost to you, and much more quickly. Good luck with whatever you decide to do next. I don’t think the airline’s case has any legal merit.

My understanding is that CEDR have a good record of dealing with these claims fairly, and much more quickly than a court process. I also understand that when this BA argument has been put before them - that only part of the delay was caused by non-extraordinary circumstances - then CEDR have generally rejected this defence and found in favour of the passenger. Perhaps King has more specific information that I am not aware of though? Of course you could write a LBA to BA, but you should only do that if you intend to follow through with the threat. And given that there is a cheaper and quicker alternative to try first, I’m not sure why you would rush to court. In the unlikely event that CEDR doesn’t give you satisfaction, you would still be at liberty to start a legal action.

LBA is letter before action - the formal letter you write before commencing a legal claim. A court claim will take some time to progress - and will cost you some money in the initial outlay (which you get back if you win). So it's worth exhausting quicker options first. If you contact the CAA, they will tell you that BA is signed up to an Alternative Dispute Resolution scheme - for BA it is CEDR. So worth going through them first. Details here: https://www.caa.co.uk/passengers/resolving-travel-problems/how-the-caa-can-help/alternative-dispute-resolution/ I agree by the way with your logic: BA cannot start attributing parts of the delay to different causes, with temporal proportions. Either the delay is caused by extraordinary circumstances or it is not. If the delay is compounded by other factors - as it usually is - that's just tough for BA. A real shame that BA treat their customers with such contempt - but almost all the airlines seem to resist these dealing with these payments properly, unfortunately.

What a miserable business for you. As a regular commuter on South Western Railway, I can attest that they are absolute pants - whether on a strike day or not. I am frequently inconvenienced by them - sometimes seriously - and I would hate to think how I would cope with their service if I had mobility or other issues: they are truly terrible. I hope another solution presents itself, so you don't have to spend Xmas alone.

I would not get distracted by the fact that, on another occasion, they did not enforce the 20 mins gate closure rule. Stick to what happened in your case, which - as you describe it - is that the period between the gate being first advertised, then boarding opened, and then the gate closed was only 15 mins - and that this did not allow you enough time (by the airport's own admission) to get to the gate. If this is what happened, then you would have a good case for "involuntary denied boarding" under EU Regulation 261/04 (the flight delay compensation rules). You would be owed 250 euros per passenger, plus the difference in fare between the new flights and what you paid. Have you made a claim citing 261/04? If not, do so. And if the airline refuses you should then open up a case with Easyjet's arbitration scheme - which is run by CEDR. You can google it.

So how much did your partner steal from the company, and how much money was recovered? And where is the balance?

I don’t think there is anything to claim for: no one was actually injured (luckily) and the builders will repair the ceiling as part of the broader loft works. I wasn’t sure whether we - as customers, rather than employers or employees - could report the incident to the HSE.

Yes they admitted this. Apparently the builder thought my wife was not in the house (she was, as were my children). At no point was she told that no one should be upstairs whilst the beam was being moved. The other thing the company said happened which shouldn’t have done was that the beam was broughtt high at an angle through the window space to the floor - where is was rested against a joist. Apparently the beams should be moved low and flat - not at an angle - lest they then slide through the ceiling (as this one did). Finally the company said they normally put the floors down before they put the high beams in - but for some reason the build went out of sequence. They’ve been quite open about all this - but it seems to me quite negligent all the same,

I promise that I’m not exaggerating. I’m quite shocked about the incident and not entirely sure what to do. Would welcome some advice. We’re having a loft conversion done by a seemingly reputable building company. Earlier this week my wife was in our first floor bedroom when a steel girder came crashing through the ceiling. It didn’t drop through all the way - the builder working in the loft was able to stop it. it came down a long way: certainly beyond head height. My wife had been standing exactly where it came crashing down only a moment before - fortunately she had moved just before the incident. She would have been struck on the head otherwise, with presumably devastating consequences. It’s really frightening to think about, to be honest. The builder was quite shaken by the whole incident, but his supervisor seemed to imply that it wasn’t too serious, said he didn’t think the beam had descended all that far, and promised to fix the ceiling. My wife is adamant that she knows exactly how far the beam came down - the supervisor wasn’t there of course. I wrote to the company to say that this was a really serious matter, that a disaster had narrowly been averted, and that I wanted both a proper investigation and for the incident to be formally reported as a “near miss”. The Director of the company called me back the same day, was quite apologetic, but said there was little to be done now. The nature of the incident - ie no one was actually hurt - - meant that there was no body that the incident should be reported to - though they would formally record it in their register. Otherwise he was prepared to dismiss ther builder, or move him off my job. But I don’t want to damage a young lad’s livelihood. In my experience, when accidents like this happen its usually because of systemic failures that enable individual errors to happen, I’m worried that the company has been a bit dismissive of what I fear is a really serious incident, and that I have an obligation to make sure that lessons are properly learned so that no one else is put at risk like this. Next time they might not be so lucky. Would welcome others’ thoughts and advice on what I should do next?

For delay compensation - you can claim off both the airline (under Regulation 261/04 - which would be 600 euros per passenger for a four hours plus delay, under the cause of the delay was "extraordinary") and from your insurance - if your policy has the protection (some policies do, but it is often not a lot of money - perhaps £50 per 24 hours of delay). For the costs you incurred by the delay (accommodation, meals, etc) you can only claim once, and as the airline is liable for these (even if the cause of the delay was extraordinary) your insurance company would expect you to claim from them first.

If the floor level is irrelevant, and your issue is that the door tracks have been installed higher than the contract says, then what does the contract say the track height is being measured against?