Wife's flight ticket was cancelled without warning...

A question about : Wife's flight ticket was cancelled without warning...

My wife is Colombian but lives with me in England. We have just got back from visiting her family. Basically, my wife only needed a ticket from Colombia to England as part of this journey. However, I discovered it was Ј100 cheaper to purchase a return ticket (from England to Colombia) and only use the 'return' part of the journey. So I bought this ticket thinking it was the smart thing to do.

My wife in the meantime wrote to the travel agency to say she wouldn't need the outward journey.

Anyway, at the end of our holiday, the night before we were due to come back, we had problems checking in. After several phone calls, we discovered the airline had cancelled her return flight because she hadn't taken the outward journey. I had to buy an additional ticket for Ј500 to resolve this. The travel agency blame the airline and the airline are blaming the travel agency.

Do we have a right to compensation for this? We were not warned that this would happen. Who holds the blame? Also, I paid by credit card. Could I pursue a claim under Section 75?

Any advice is greatly appreciated. I have lost Ј500 and it's put me in a difficult situation

Best answers:

• It is common for return fares to work out better value than a single. Even on rail travel this can be the case. By booking a return and not using the first leg, the airline are almost always going to cancel the remaining flights.
  You need to scrutinise their T&C to be certain.
• The airline was perfectly within their rights. This is standard on return or multi-sector tickets, if you cancel or no-show the first sector, all subsequent sectors are cancelled. It is almost certain to be covered in the airline T&Cs.
  The reason is to stop people doing exactly what you were trying to do, which was to "beat" their ticketing rules from each country.
  Compensation is unlikely, maybe you could pursue the travel agency if you could prove that they advised you this would be ok, but otherwise I wouldn't hold out much hope. Chalk it up to experience, I'm afraid.
• Just to add to the above, you may be eligible for taxes refund, but you need to check the T&C. Not all airlines prohibit flight coupons to be used in the wrong order or incomplete but most do.
  From memory Ryanair allows part journey usage but I'm know you won't have used them. My point being, check the T&C.
• As above, it's standard practice on pretty much every airline when a return ticket ticket is sold. If you read their t&c's it will be there.
  Did the travel agent ever respond to your wife's letter advising wouldn't be using the outbound flight? They would have had no authority to override the airlines T&C's and should have told you that this was not possible and that you would lose your inbound flight if you were a no show for the outbound.
  Whether they will accept that they have messed up is debatable, if they never responded to your wife's letter they will most likely deny all knowledge.
• I did something very similar with BA a couple of years ago. I had a flight from Tampa to Manchester via Chicago.
  I phoned them up and said I didn't want to use the Tampa to Chicago leg As I now wanted to get to Chicago via New York, could I claim anything back for the Tampa to Chicago leg. As was being a bit hopeful.
  They didn't say a word about if I missed the Tampa to Chicago leg then the Chicago to Manchester leg would also be cancelled.
  I had to phone BA about something else after I had booked the Tampa New York Chicago flight and this issue came up - otherwise God knows what would have happened.
  Luckily for me BA record every phone call, so they listened back to the call and did the necessary amendments. as they accepted that I had no idea about this in order "racket" and made it pretty clear what my intentions were.
  Regarding the T &C's BA's are about 25 pages in length and the not using them in the correct order is on about page 7
• isnt they way round this issue to book return the opposite way? or does it not work out cheaper that way?
  eg purchase a return from colombia to england so its the second leg you arent using rather than the first?
• Supply and demand, local competition, target markets etc will all mean that you get apparent "oddities" that a ticket in reverse can be more or less than the other.
  It used to be the old trick on the ferries to buy two "day trip specials" and just use the outbound of one and the return of the other. Ferries quickly caught on but werent quite as mean as they would allow you on but only if you paid the additional fair that a normal return ticket would have cost.
  With any type of travel, or anything else for that matter, if you think you've found a loophole then double check everything in the T&Cs to ensure that someone else hasnt thought of it first and so the lawyers have closed it down.