Article: 'Flights Chaos'
With the chaos at the moment affecting nearly all flights in the United Kingdom there are hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people who are stranded abroad. All thanks to just 1 single volcano the entire UK flight infrastructure has come to an almost complete standstill!
Is there anyone to blame for the situation? Well no, not really. The people who make the decisions are making them solely based on the safety of passengers. Who can argue with that, when one life is surely worth a lot more than a bunch of money, never mind the fact that if something went wrong it would not be a matter of one life, but a matter of hundreds of lives in the air on any one aeroplane, never mind the lives on the ground if that plane were to crash in a busy area, city or indeed school.
Birmingham airport should have been the location of a friend of ours landing from Portugal last Thursday, in preparation for conducting the marriage of another friend. Needless to say, he was unable to make it back in time and therefore missed the wedding! Thankfully the wedding still went ahead, and the service was conducted by another (who did a very fine job by the way!).
Are these people, along with the many thousands of others, entitled to any sort of compensation from Birmingham Airport or indeed the airlines themselves? I am no legal expert but I have heard differing stories about what people are entitled to. I believe that in at least some cases they are entitled to a refund for the tickets themselves, but that ongoing expenses such as missing the hotel at the other end, will often not be covered unless additional insurance has been take out against the holiday.
If the flight is part of a full package, then, I believe, in some cases the entire amount could possibly be refunded.
Either way, there is little doubt that this recent situation will cost someone - the customers, the airline, the airports, the hotels, the theatres, in fact the entire economy a very large amount.
Will this loss finally end up costing the end customers more? Probably, the airlines have got to stay in business after all. But let us hope that it will be a loss that they are content to absorb into the substantial profits that they were likely(?) to make anyway.
