Hello All,

So, we had the recent unfortunate experience of flying Aeroflot with my young family, Flying London-Moscow-Ufa to go visit family for a few weeks. Booked a through-ticket for entire journey (single reservation code), direct with Aeroflot on their website, and a transfer window of 1.5 hours.

Flight from London was fine, land in Moscow Sheremetyevo airport, which looked out the window to be undergoing serious construction works, taxi around for 10 minutes, and then a slow 20minute bus ride back to the terminal. Race through passport control (Well, tried to), security, security again, sprint to the gate… and get denied boarding, as we're too late. (annoying, as the plane is right there, still connected to the bridge.) Aeroflot rep there sends us back out of departures to the Aeroflot ticket office to rebook us onto the next available flight.

At the ticket office, we're told we need to pay a re-booking fee of 35,000 Ruble ( £470 ), as we're responsible for missing our flight?!?! (Oh, and we can only do this for you in the next 30 minutes. And by the way, if you don't do it, you lose the return leg of your flight. Really does feel like a calculated extortion with the follow-on hard sell tactics.) We're tired, we have a crying infant & a screaming toddler, we try to argue against this, but in the end we just pay.

It also becomes evident from the steady stream of angry passengers to the ticket office that this is not an isolated event, but a money-making racket. (Consider it a warning if you're considering flying with them).

Now, I was under the impression that booking a through-ticket with an airline protects against problems like this, and the Airline should just re-book you onto the next earliest possible flight?

Have contacted Aeroflot Customer services, and just received what looks like a standard cut & paste Fob-off - saying they weren't responsible for the missed connection, and the 1st plane wasn't late, and we should have booked a longer connection time. (Technically, the 1st plane was 1 minute late according to the stats, which might have just made a difference for us, but I doubt it means I can argue it using regulation EC261/2004. Would be a satisfying middle-finger to them to somehow get refunded the initial amount, plus compensation for delay though.)

Now, the entire reason we went for booking through-tickets with the airline is to ensure that theres some sort of cover for missed connections. (Queues at passport control, security, etc.) But I can't seem to find any regulation or anything really enforcing that unless its a direct result of delay of the first plane? Have I actually got a case here against Aeroflot? Any suggestions of legislation I can actually use to back up my position against them?(If it goes to small claims, its going to look really weak without any rules / legislation backing me…)