had a letter from thomas cook this morning, they have changed our flights, we were travelling friday to friday, they have now changed..... monday to monday!! martin was supposed to work the weekend that we were due back! he has to speak to his boss, see if there's any way round it, if not, well, saw on the website this morning that there is a flight from exeter so perhaps we can change to that. so much hassle! just hope we can get it sorted soon. the same thing happened last year, i think they must re organise all the flights around easter time. it's just so annoying!!! sorry to moan! but it's upstting when you thought everything had been arranged.
ger x
Oh my! Fingers crossed that Martin gets it sorted :)
Ger, don't you dare apologise, you are entitled to complain it's just so annoying. The flight price will be so much dearer now to re-book with another operator in order to fly from your preferred airport .
This year XL stopped flying from Newcastle on a Friday evening. It was a great flight for us as it meant one day's less holiday taken off Keith's annual entitlement. :-(
Good luck with your Exeter flight.
Eileenx
just had a letter to say our flight has been changed from monday 1450 to 2310 coming back at0515 on tuesday instead of 1430 monday afternoon as the flight has been cancelled by thomas cook any one else had same trouble
B***dy annoying these changes. You book a flight at hours or days to suit and then they change to, in my view, unsociable times.
Maybe they refund a little of the cost especially when you go from day flights to overnight flights ?
Negg
We agree totally with Eggy. Changing from day to night flights should enable you to either get a substantial refund, or find an alternative, then cancel on a full refund and book the new one, but we bet neither are on offer (at least without strings attached.)
We sometimes book night flights because they are significantly cheaper than daytime ones - fair enough - our own choice. But they entail arriving at your resort very late at night and that awful next day when you get home, feeling drained, even ill from the disruption to body clcoks.
We would push hard for a big concession if we were in your shoes.
philandjen
Our flight to Rhodes with T Cook in June has been changed from a morning to an afternoon flight and return from early afternoon to after midnight, this is happening all over the UK with flights to Rhodes by TC aircraft.
We are going with Olympia from Leeds/Bradford airport on a TC aircraft and were told that as the times were less than 12 hours later than advertised we will not be compensated.
It could be back to twice a year to Arillas in future. My only hope is that TC do not change the 0830 from Manchester to Corfu, we have travelled on that many times and do not want to fly later. TC not my favourite people ???
Mick (rant over)
i have also had a flight time change with thomas cook;instead of a 06.05 am departure i now leave at 10.30 am and on my return it has gone from 12-15 to 16.40 very annoying when you have to go to work the next day.
T Cook just sort of cheered me up a bit. Septembers flight to Corfu from Manchester has been changed from 0840 to 0735 so we get to Arillas earlier but the bad part is that we have to leave earlier and loose 25 minutes away from Arillas this time. At least they haven't moved it to a later flight (yet) like our June holiday.
TTFN Mick.
We have had the same problem with Thomas Cook. They have changed our flights to Ibiza both ways in May. Our return flight is now 13 hours later and we don't arrive in Gatwick until 4am which is awful with young children. The worst thing is that it is impossible to get through to their customer services and they don't reply to e-mails so what do you do ? I think their customer service is the pits. We are travelling to Arillas in July with Thomson hopefully we won't have the same problem. Maybe Joe can advise of a miracle way to actually getting through to Thomas Cook customer service department. I have been trying to get through for 2 days now with no luck .
Can't help you with Thomas Cook but when you get to Arillas, life will take on a new and better feeling. All your worries will dissolve and disappear. After one day you can even get over a bereavement. Arillas is true "colour of magic" just join the club.
It's worth it....
phil
I wish Thomson would change our flight times. We dont get to Arillas till near midnight.
riggers..
hi riggers.
We've never been very practical but in your situation we always had a full bottle of vodka and a couple of tins of coke in our hand luggage. When we had been awake all night and ourselves and our luggage were dumped in the road in Sidari at 6 am it came in very handy.
First time in Arillas then, but the rest is history. I've posted about most of it since. But the best is yet to come....
lol
lots of love
phil and jenny
Never thought of that Phil. lol
They never seem to change the flight times for the better. We never really wanted to go to Ibiza but booked it because the price was good and the flight times were great, when they changed them I was going to ask if because the change was so great we could cancel and re-book for Corfu instead but they are impossible to contact. They promise to reply to e-mails within 2 days but they don't.
Just to add to this one, we booked Skiathos for May and they have cancelled loads of flights. Whils't the flight is the same they have cancelled the accomodation and have moved our resort choice. This was with Olympic but it seems to be happenning all around. There is nothing on the Skiathos website in comparrison to other years. We just hope nothing changes for Arillas come October.
Looking forward to Arllas being the same
Regards
Beachbum
Just read in Greece magazine that Olympic are stopping all unprofitable routes so that it can operate without the state aid which has been necessary to keep it afloat for years.
Just had a letter our times were
1100hrs manchester
1615hrs corfu and coming back
corfu 1745
manchester 1915 now we fly at
manchester 0800
corfu1315 and coming back
corfu 1445
manchester 1545
not often you get a change for the better, I hope it stayes as it is. Monach flight by the way. Viv
Lucky you Viv.
Hope this happens to me .....
riggers...
We fly out on the 8th Sep from Manchester up to now our flight times with Thomas Cook have changed twice but the good news is we get to Arillas earlier.
We booked holidays with a Tuesday flights with Thompson to fly from Cardiff to Corfu in July and September. We have just been told the flights have been cancelled and that we are now flying from Gatwick. They were however pleased to tell us that we could either cancel without penalty or fly from Gatwick without paying any extra supplement. Which is a bit rich given it costs more to fly from Cardiff.
In the event we managed to switch the September flight to a Friday from Cardiff, but given the late notice have had to bite the bullet and accept the July flight from Gatwick.
This is annoying given that we booked early and its going to cost us quite a bit to get to Gatwick
we have now cancelled our holiday as thomas cook were so unhelpfull and wouldnt even drop the flight supp we had payed for our day flights will now try to get a flight through someone else
Hmm...looking like its going to be a repeat of last years fiasco`s..
Just got another letter from T C. flights changed to 30 mins earlier both ways, we donn't fly untill 28th September so plenty of time to change again. Mick
And no doubt it will.......
Just a quick question to donna@colin. Did you lose any money when you cancelled with Thomas Cook as that is what we wanted to do. You are right they are extremely unhelpful, the only way we managed to contact them was by e-mail and they refused us any help and told us that if we cancelled we would lose 50% of our holiday even though they had changed our flight times by 13 hours. This woman called Fiona even told us that we could not make any changes to our booking unless we called in (we had been trying the phone number for a week without luck (8p a minute to listen to recorded music for up to an hour at a time) and could not make any requests by e-mail as the people responsible for cancellations etc did not have e-mail (how likely is that in this day and age). The local Thomas Cook would not help as we had booked direct on the internet.
Now i am starting to panic, i booked with thomson as soon as i came home last june for june this year. Nothing about change of flight times yet.
Time to ring them i think to make sure they have my booking.
Nine weeks on Tuesday....Roll on........................................
riggers....
HI
Is anyone flying out on the 29th of September from Manchester at 20.45 i think it is a monarch flight, if so have they heard if there as been any time changes.
Thanks
Russell
lost £100 as we had only paid a low deposit but still would of been better in my pocket than theirs
Hi Kes, looks like you could be right, It started last year with XL and then Thompsons joined them. I think the only one's that didnt change where Monach and I know they have this year just lucky this time that it was to out advantage. Hope everybody else manages to get to Arillas without the troubles of last year. Viv
It will be interesting to hear how the Easy Jet flights get on this year. So far, so good!
Yes Viv...same old story..we have booked XL but are flying Air Malta? we had a minor alteration to the flight time but not to drastic..fingers crossed
Hi All,
Having a break from the packing !! thought I would have a read of the forum
our flights with Thomas Cook have been changed with very little notice now
we are flying out and get to Corfu landing about midnight !! never been to Corfu before so by the time we get to Arillas presume sometime early hours of the morning
hope we dont feel too grumpy !! would hate to make a bad impression on the poor Hotel owners who have to put up with this stupid time to come and visit. I shall
save a smile because what the heck I cannot wait to visit only 8 days to go !!
Bye all, back to the ironong.
Regards Grockle
All these flight changes, its ridiculous!!
I wonder why it is that they change so much??
there can be many many reasons but usually its one of 3
Overbooking at the commercial planning stage, these are the airline teams who decide how many and who to sell these seats to, be it the Tour Operator, direct or 3rd Party. These are planned maybe a year in advance but often the aircraft will change so for example a CFU flight that was planned on a Boeing 757 with 235 seats but for a myriad of reasons was later changed to an Airbus A320 with 180 seats, causing 55 passengers to overspill.
Consolidation. For prices to remain competitive aircraft need to be full, a situation even worse now with the fuel prices. If there are 2 half full Corfu flights going from Manchester within a reasonable time of each other then they might be merged. Be grateful if you fly charter to Corfu if this was scheduled chances are it would be just be cancelled. One thing travellers never seem to made fully aware of is that flight times are not and never will be guaranteed, its on your ticket, hidden on the back in the conditions small print, conditions you agree to when purchasing the ticket. Good piece of advice, more so these days always read what you are agreeing to.
Slots. Aircraft can not just roll down the runway and take off whenever they want, slots must be bought and these can be pretty tight, these effectively allow the flight to operate a safe path through the air and all ATC regions. Most slots are in high demand and during the start of the season will often change. You will always notice Flight Deck and Cabin Crew pushing to get away on time this is to make the slot, a delay of even 10 minutes can cause this slot to be missed and the next available one may be 3 hours away.This also explains why day flights are much more expensive than deep night flights, the 'good' slots cost much more.
Well explained Joe! Us mere mortals have sometimes hard time understanding the reasons behind the delays, especially once that you are already sitting in the plane and the announce an hour and a half delay in taking off (happens almost only when travelling with BA).
You will not believe how much delays cost us and then thats not taking into account our reputation. Delays are horrific but I now sit next to the Ops teams and I see how hard they work to minimise serious delays and how angry they get when things spiral further out of control.
Thanks for posting that information Joe, very interesting. I just hope that my flight with Monarch from Birmingham does not get changed from 6.30am. Thats a lovely time to depart for a holiday.
I agree terry, we fly at 5.30, and arrive just in time for lunch!!! What more could we ask for??