Thank goodness, Cyprus airways is now ‘back to normal operations’, according to the website and I have a confirmed booking on a flight home for my son at the weekend. It could have been worse. I have been complaining about the way Cyprus Airways has handled the situation, but I have found an airline that makes them seem positively helpful and my travails all rather minor.
I read about a guy stuck in Shanghai trying to get back to the UK on Finnair. The airline has offered to fly him and his wife home in mid May but is selling tickets to the UK on earlier dates. Their visa is about to run out and they will be fined for remaining in the country illegally. They are finding it impossible to contact the airline and the website says that it is not responsible for the costs incurred as a result of the volcano, even though EU law states that the airline is responsible for meeting reasonable costs of hotel accommodation and food and drink incurred!
Ryanair have been refusing to compensate passengers for expenditure, outrageously flouting EU consumer rules. Who will make them pay? Their argument is something like, if you pay £30 for a flight, you can’t expect the airline to come up with thousands of pounds in compensation for customers when a natural disaster happens. Which just goes to show that the cheapest is not always a good deal in a crisis. You get what you pay for, or in some cases you don’t even get that. The moral of the story being, only use airlines with an excellent history of customer service. I wonder what Cyprus Airways’ line is on this? We don’t have to claim for hotel bills so I have no idea.
My daughter, also stuck here, has been idling away her time looking for a villa in Ayia Napa for a summer holiday with her friends. Her story of yesterday’s search led to much amusement in our house on the very subject closest to all our hearts at the moment: customer service. What do you do when you look at villas on a website, find one you like and are unable to check the availability because the website won’t let you? Obvious answer is to call the contact number given on the website. Apparently not. My daughter called the number to be told, very helpfully by the woman that answered, that it was not her job to check availability, why didn’t my daughter check it online. When my daughter explained that she had been trying to do that but couldn’t, she was told to use another computer; it was her fault for using a Mac. Hilarious!
Needless to say she won’t be going to those particular luxury villas or paying those luxury prices, which she probably can’t afford as a student anyway. I think a week in Ibiza is a much better option and closer if she gets stuck there and needs to get home on a train or a boat!
