Cheap Airline Tickets

Travel Directory | Cheap Airline Tickets for the UK and USA. Bugbog has listed the most popular air travel 'supermarkets' in these areas so travellers can compare prices and find the best deal for their chosen destination. Many of the bigger agencies now also offer deals on car hire, hotels, holiday packages and even cruises.

Booking tours and/or flights?
A couple of lessons learnt from the XL Leisure Group [Britain's 3rd largest tour operator] collapse which left 85,000 tourists stranded abroad, another 200,000 who lost their planned holidays but will be refunded the cost and up to 30,000 without either holiday or refund:
- Pay for your vacation package or flight by credit card, not debit card as the credit card carries it's own purchase guarentee but the debit card doesn't.
- Check that your tour operator is covered by the ATOL insurance scheme which ensures a full refund if a trip goes wobbly.

Compensation for delayed or cancelled flights:

James Fremantle of the Air Transport Users Council says: “Passengers should not be out of pocket. Remember the law does not specify a limit as to how much compensation you can claim and indeed a limit of £100 for a last minute hotel sounds quite unrealistic."

Peter McCarthy at consumer group Which? agrees. “As long your claims are reasonable and you don’t book yourself into somewhere really extravagant, passengers should press ahead with claims even if they are over the airline’s “limits”. If your flight is delayed or cancelled, you are entitled to assistance. This can include free meals and refreshments depending on how long you are waiting. It also includes free hotel accommodation and transfers to the hotel if the re-routed flight means you have an overnight stay at the airport.
You are also allowed two free phone calls, faxes or e-mails and you may be entitled to financial compensation if your flight is cancelled, depending on the circumstances.”

Some possible claims:

Cancellation of Flights - if your flight is cancelled you are entitled to the following, as long as you are a passenger flying from an EU airport or from an airport outside the EU to an EU airport on an EU carrier:

Refund or re-routing – you will be given a choice between a refund of the ticket or of re-routing to your final destination. You are not entitled to reimbursement of any other components of your trip such as hotel and transfer costs.

Compensation – If there is a delay in getting to your destination due to re-routing, compensation varies according to the length of your journey and the delay to your destination. For example, if your journey was up to 1500km and you were delayed by up to two hours, you will receive 125 Euros. If your journey was more than 3500km and you were delayed by more than four hours, you will be compensated by 600 Euros.

Assistance at the airport - free meals and refreshments as well as two free phone calls/ emails/ faxes should also be provided when waiting for the re-routed flights. In the event of re-routing when the flight is the next day, free accommodation and transfer to and from that accommodation should be provided by the airline.

Bottom line flight advice: if you want to be sure you arrive at your destination with your baggage you are better off NOT flying BA. While the scale of the current crisis is unique and cancelled flights are uncommon, BA does have a long history of losing luggage and weaseling out of compensation payments.

Your new airline rights,
cheap tickets or not so cheap!

In February 2005 the European Union introduced new rules on compensation for problems on flights, not dissimilar to America's Montreal Convention that came into force in 2004.
The European regulations are supported and monitored by the Air Transport Users' Council [AUC], but airlines plan to challenge the rules in the European Court of justice in late 2005.
The rules are complex but here's a summary of the current situation:

- if there's a problem, whether it's a delay, cancellation or you've been bumped off a flight due to overbooking, complain immediately and demand written details of your rights.
If you make a claim in writing the airline should pay you by cheque within a week. If not, send your correspondence on to AUC at 45-59, Kingsway, London WC2B 6TE. If they believe the airline is at fault they will pass your information on to the Civil Aviation Authority who have the power to fine airlines heavily.

- delays: compensation depends on the length of delay and the length of flight but, for example, a 1,500km flight delayed by two hours should result in meals, refreshments and a couple of free phone calls/emails.
For an airline flight delayed by more than five hours you should receive all the above and may receive full refund for the cost of the ticket if you choose to give up on the flight.
If the airport closes before your delayed flight can leave the airline must pay for a hotel room and transfer to it.

- cancellations: if the airline can show that the cancellation was caused by 'extraordinary circumstances which could not be avoided' then you get nothing. Circumstances could be bad weather, airport strikes [though not the airline staff], security alerts and traffic control difficulties.
If you have to wait, for example two hours, and before your 1,500km [930 miles] flight is cancelled you will be entitled to a full refund and £170. The rate rises with length of time and length of wait.

- bumped: if the flight is overbooked and you cannot board, then the airline must offer a full refund or put you on another flight as soon as possible. They must also pay you between £85-£416 depending on the journey length and delay length.

More information from AUC