Families worry over cancelled flight expense costs

With thousands of UK holidaymakers having their flights home cancelled in recent days, many are worried if their extra costs will be reimbursed.

Families have reported forking out for food, accommodation and in some cases, alternative travel, due to the chaos.

And while there are regulations in place for people to claim expenses, there appears to be grey areas.

Latest figures suggest almost 2,000 flights to and from the UK have been cancelled since Monday.

The Baker family are among thousands of holidaymakers who have had their flight cancelled due to the data glitch which hit the UK's air traffic control system.

Mark and Holly, along with their two children, were stranded in Palma, Majorca, when their EasyJet flight home to Brighton was cancelled on Monday.

They told the BBC they were offered accommodation and a new flight in a week's time, but due to work and one of their daughters starting secondary school, they could not wait that long.

Instead, the family embarked on an overnight ferry from the Spanish island to Toulon in France, where they are hoping to take three trains and another ferry to get back to Brighton by Thursday night.

Mr Baker said the family was keeping receipts for everything, but was unsure if they would be able to claim for them. Excluding food costs, the cost of travel and accommodation for the family of four is just under £1,000 so far and has been paid on credit cards.

"I didn't see I had any choice," said Mr Baker. "When you're standing there at the airport at 11 o'clock at night, with kids, and you don't know what you're supposed to do.

"I don't know if I'm going to get this money back. That's my worry," added Mr Baker.

He said the family was being conscious on the amount they were spending on food and accommodation, given the guidelines around claiming costs stating they need to be "reasonable".

Mr Baker said he had tried to get in contact with EasyJet on the phone but could not speak to any staff member and so was keeping all of his receipts in the hope of claiming the money back.

"I honestly don't know [if I will get money back]," said Mr Baker. "I'm trying to keep my costs down just in case. I'm not going to take the Mickey."

The BBC has contacted EasyJet for a comment.

The Civil Aviation Authority, the watchdog for the industry, says under UK law, people have legal rights on many flights to, from or within the UK.

If a flight is cancelled, a passenger's airline must let them choose between either getting a refund or an alternative flight, regardless of how far in advance the cancellation was made.

However, due to the disruption being caused by a data glitch by National Air Traffic Services (Nats) and not airlines, people could not be eligible for extra compensation due to them being "extraordinary circumstances".

But an airline must find alternative flights and if another airline is flying to your destination significantly sooner, or there are other suitable modes of transport available, then people have a right to be booked onto that alternative transport instead.

Rory Boland, travel editor at consumer group Which?, told the BBC that expenses could be claimed by people who had booked alternative modes of transport as a result of there being no flights available.

"The airlines cannot claim an extraordinary circumstance forever," he said.

In the cases of the Bakers and other families, Mr Boland said that "nobody should be waiting a week for a replacement flight" as the law stated airlines were required to offer alternatives "at the earliest possibility".

"Waiting a week is never going to be the earliest opportunity," said Mr Boland, meaning people could claim costs if they booked an earlier flight, or made different travel arrangements.

The chaos endured by thousands of UK travellers was a result of Nats receiving data that it could not process, leading to part of its system failing.

Nats controls most aircraft in UK airspace and receives millions of flight plans every year. Airlines submit every flight path to the national control centre and these should automatically be shared with Nats controllers.

Due to the failure, Nats reverted to a manual system - meaning fewer flights could be handled. For several hours they had to manually input flight routes, rather than it happen automatically, which was slower and caused a huge backlog.