acarterlcfc

Hi all,

Late year 2020, Qatar cancelled my flight back to Heathrow from BKK, citing Covid.

Fair enough. I won't go into the details, but I am trying to find out what laws/statutes were put in place at this time to protect passenger rights? Post-Brexit.

Thanks,

Alan

Schwann

You wouldn't be covered under any EU or UK laws as it's a non EU airline departing from a non EU airport.

You would have been covered by Qatar's "Book with confidence" scheme at the time and their conditions of carriage.

Did they refund you for the cancelled flight at the time or did you rebook etc?

acarterlcfc

Well they told me I could be refunded but it was for a fraction of the overall ticket price. They told me it would be better if I did not want to rebook with another airline (to get myself home) to book an alternative route with them which would still get me to the UK.

Spent several hundred pounds calling to find out precisely how I would be then transported to my final destination, i.e. where I flew from, which was hundreds of miles away from where they were proposing to fly me to. In the final call an agent told me I was not entitled to either a reroute OR a refund and that the ticket was now invalid.

So paid for my own flight home. Now found out that agent gave me completely the wrong information.

So just trying to find out precisely what laws or conditions of carriage the agent should have known about.

IAN-UK

It's now 2023. Ok, only just, but you've left it a bit late.

From what you say, the airline clearly didn't do what it was contracted to do, for whatever reason. There was a generous but shifting airline initiative in place to assist ticket-holders (Book with Confidence), but it appears this was not helpful to you.

You should put your complaint to them in a simple, bare bones way and tell them what you want. Presumably that is a refund, or the cost of the replacement ticket. Best forget about consequential losses and communication costs.

If that doesn't yield a satisfactory result then take them to court. The legal route doesn't have to be complicated or expensive.




VOIP routes such as Skype would have kept your communication costs well below "hundreds of pounds".