XL bankrupt - Holiday canceled

12 Sep

Posted by Brad as Angry Rants

(3 votes, average: 3.67 out of 5)
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Well we were due to go to Gran Canaria for a week next Saturday with XL, who went into administration this morning causing all flights etc to be canceled, so 85,000 people are in the very fucked position of being stranded overseas, and even those who were in mid-air at the time of the announcement had their flight redirected to the nearest airport (in one case a flight bound for Glasgow was redirected to Paris).

The ridiculous thing about it from my point of view is that we were charged a fee for ATOL protection in the case of something just like this happening. So Imagine my my surprise to find that if you booked your XL holiday directly with them through their website or call centre you have no protection via ATOL whatsoever, only if you booked you XL flight/holiday through some other agent like Thompsons. What a load of bullshit.

I had a feeling some bad shit was going to happen though thanks to the credit crunch, so had paid for this with my credit card so fortunately I have not been fucked for £900 this morning and can claim it all from my credit card company under the consumer credit act.

I found out today that there is one big brand travel insurance company that covers airline insolvency, administration, bankruptcy that I will be taking out travel insurance with next time (seems like a pretty fundamental thing for a travel insurance policy to have!). And that is the Post Office travel insurance, if I had not have used a credit card to pay for our holiday and insured with the Post Office travel insurance then I would be entitled to claim my money back for the failure of XL.

So now we are looking for a new holiday.

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3 Responses

me

September 12th, 2008 at 10:32 pm
1

Hi Brad!

I think your post is incorrect. Regardless of whether you booked direct with XL, if you booked a “package” including a flight and hotel with an XL company you can get recompense.

Check out the CAA site at:

http://www.caa.co.uk/default.aspx?catid=1804

for the lowdown.

Regards,

Irv
Brad

September 12th, 2008 at 10:44 pm
2

Hi Irv,

Thanks for the feedback, I did suspect this from reading about a previous failure but from the page you sent which I read earlier today it does confirm that no matter what form of booking you have, if you purchased direct then ATOL won’t help.

In particular

If you booked an air inclusive package or charter flight with one of the tour operators below you will be protected by ATOL.

(XL is not listed in green section)

From above the red section

“If you booked direct with XL Airways or have a accommodation only booking with Medlife we are regret to inform you your booking is not protected by ATOL”

I have not heard anything on the news (Internet, TV, radio) today to make me think otherwise, it seems to be a particularly bad case of failure including on the ATOL side of things, with the CAA leaving too many people who are already overseas finding it difficult and expensive to get home with some flight companies capitalising on the inconvenience and charging up to £1800 for last minute flights to get people back home.
Brad

September 13th, 2008 at 3:40 pm
3

Seems you may be right Irv, package holidays are through an ATOL protected agent ATOL 3827 - it’s worth doing the claim form anyway to have a chance at getting a refund through them, for anyone else similarly affected, the claim form can be downloaded here.

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XL bankrupt - Holiday canceled

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