Budget Travel - Refund for a canceled Armavia flight?

Please forgive me if this is posted in the wrong forum and moderators, feel free to fwd if necessary.

My 24 year old son has finally topped me and entered into travel territory that is beyond my scope of expertise. Specific details are still arriving but I will give you what I have so far:

He is studying and living in Israel and decided to do some trekking to far off lands on a holiday break. All travel arrangements were made online at each companies own website.

All went well until the return flight from Yerevan, Armenia on flight 277 scheduled 7/5/12. The flight was repetitively delayed, at 3 hour intervals, for at least 23 hours with no explanation. When my son eventually departed on another flight on 7/6/12 (routing now to Athens then TLV), the flight had still not departed but I am currently unclear whether it was every officially canceled.

Any advise for how he can to go about getting a refund would be helpful. I have given him all the contact information for the Armavia office in TLV and the instructions as to how we would go about the process in the US but I am not sure the procedure would be the same. There is no place on the website to check the reservation/confirmation code or the flight status. There is no US contact.

Lastly, he is unclear as to whether he will be reimbursed for the one way flight he had to purchase in the airport to reach his intended destination or whether they will just refund the unused Armavia ticket. Being a young student, the difference of the two is painful.

1. Was the flight booked with a credit card?

2. If yes, was it a U.S. issued one. Should this be the case, file a request for refund with the CC company immediately. You will need documentation in most cases.

3. Since the airline issued the tickets, ask them to research and provide a refund for the unused portion of the ticket. They may or may not actually be helpful. In any case, file with the credit card company as soon as possible.

4. Next time, buy travel insurance which is a cheap (in the scheme of things) protection.

5. Does he have documentation such as photos of the reader board showing the delay? Does he still have all the tickets-without them the probability of successful resolution plummets.

Good luck.

I'd suggest that this is best hosted in the Budget Travel forum, and I'll move it there. Ocn Vw 1K, Moderator, TravelBuzz.

More information regarding this flight has come to light and this post may need to be transferred again to Online Agency forum.

I have come to learn that these tickets were purchased (there were actually 2 persons traveling) via Cheapoair.com. This is a US company so there may be some recourse? I was unsure originally if the US "Contract of Carriage" applies to international carriers. Here is his accounting of the situation:

"The flight was continually delayed, and they made no effort to inform us of why, or correct the situation, or offer us an alternative. Instead, they would have had us sitting in the ticketing area for more than 48 hours had we not taken action ourselves. In fact, they personally.guaranteed.and promised us that the flight would be ready to leave at 12:00, then 18:00, then 22:00, then 00:30, then 03:00 - each time assuring us (only upon our questioning) that it would leave as scheduled. The staff were largely unprofessional and very unhelpful. Finally, after the flight scheduled for 03:00 was delayed until 20:00 the next day, we had had enough and approached the ticketing purchase desk, and demanded that they put us on another connecting flight out of the airport. They told us that nothing was available, and offered no solution. Finally, I insisted that they transfer our ticket to another flight so that we may use another airline to get to our destination. After much rudeness and.hassle, she agreed to put us on an Armavia flight to Athens, but that we would have to purchase another ticket to get from Athens to Tel Aviv on Olympic Airlines. Exacerbated, we agreed and bought the ticket..

This is where it is potentially complicated, the original ticket that I purchased was in fact used, but only as a means to get me to Athens (halfway to my destination). The airline Armavia nonetheless failed in its original agreement to get me to my destination. I understand plane troubles and delays, but then it is their responsibility to make sure that I get to my destination, they did no such thing..

So my question is what should I protest: should I claim that the original ticket was not fulfilled, or should I protest and demand that Armavia.reimburse.me for the cost of the extra ticket that I had to buy from Olympic Air?"

My son is living out of the country and has very limited ability for international calls so I am trying to do as much as I can for him from here. His CC is also US based. Now that I am dealing with US companies, might I have some ability to protest?