Do I really have to pay £2,000 to switch my flight dates?

Simon Calder answers your questions on additional fees, insurance for terminally ill travellers, and queues at Birmingham Airport

Using third-party sites such as booking.com can have unforseen problems (Getty)

Q I bought a £1,000 flight from Booking.com. I paid extra for a flexible fare. I now need to change the date due to a friend’s injury. I am repeatedly told it’s an extra £2,000 to change, despite the new flight being the same price as I originally paid. You are my last hope – can you help?

Ian H

A It is unhelpful at this stage to say so, but I cannot think of any circumstances in which I would buy a flight through an accommodation booking service. Booking.com is a couple of removes from your actual provider, the airline. The company says: “Most flights on our platform are provided via a third-party aggregator, which acts as an intermediary to the airline(s). When you make a booking, it’s directly with the airline. We’re not a ‘contractual party’ to your booking.”

In fact you enter an “intermediation contract” with the Swedish online travel agent GoToGate, to which Booking.com subcontracts its flight sales. I have received many complaints about GoToGate’s alleged poor customer service, and have yet to hear a good word said about it.

From the test bookings I have made, the “flexible ticket” option costs an additional 14 per cent on top of the basic fare. You are buying a waiver of the airline and agency fees for changing the flight time. You should pay only the difference in fare. In your case, you say that should be zero. Assuming you are going for a like-for-like change – same airline and route – to charge you £2,000 sounds nonsensical.

I suggest is you gather all the evidence you can – screenshots of the original and replacement flights on the Booking.com website – and make it clear that you are cancelling the flight under protest. Then book the flight you need (same airline, different day) for £1,000. At the end of this, you may be able to begin a legal claim.

An easier route, though, would be to cancel and then claim on travel insurance, if it involves an injury to a travel companion.

Tourists in Ronda, near Malaga, enjoy a ride in a horse-drawn carriage (AFP/Getty)

Q ​My husband has terminal cancer. He has received marvellous treatment enabling him to live very well with it. He now leads life relatively normally, even managing nine holes of golf every week. We want to go Spain for a week and I have heard we need proof of travel insurance now. We took a trip earlier in the year and the insurance cost more than the holiday. We are both in our early seventies. What do you suggest?

Name supplied

A I am sorry to hear of your husband’s prognosis and I hope he continues with what sounds a fulfilling life for as long as possible. Happily, that includes travel to the European Union without having to worry about travel insurance. Insurers pitch premiums for holidaymakers with serious pre-existing conditions (or who are very old) very highly.

But making a rational decision not to insure is a reasonable plan for travellers who face expensive insurance quotes. If either of you need urgent medical treatment in Spain, producing the UK Global Health Insurance Card (Ghic) will provide proof of an entitlement to care in a Spanish public hospital at nil or negligible cost.

The Foreign Office warns: “If you do not have appropriate insurance before you travel, you could be liable for emergency expenses, including medical treatment, which may cost thousands of pounds.” Personally, I think this is scare-mongering. If you are going to the EU or another location (such as Switzerland or Australia) that has a reciprocal health care agreement with the UK, it is reasonable to choose not to take out cover.

Naturally you will not be protected against the usual risks, from theft to cancellation cover. Nor will you get an air ambulance. I am not sure where you heard it was mandatory to be insured for a trip to Spain? It is not the case, though since Brexit, UK visitors to Spain have been required to demonstrate that they have the means to support themselves.

The West Midlands hub has a large proportion of non-business travellers, who are far less likely to be on top of the rules about luggage (Simon Calder)

Q What is going on at Birmingham airport?

Richard V

A The West Midlands airport has been seeing some very long waits for the airport security checkpoints. While it has new equipment for scanning passengers’ cabin baggage, the Department for Transport (DfT) does not permit the airport to allow through anything larger than the 100ml container size for liquids, aerosols and gels.

Typically, 10 per cent of bags are “rejected” at airport security checkpoints, ie diverted for secondary screening in the form of a hand search. The vast majority of these rejections are for infringements of the liquids rules. But at Birmingham airport, the rejection rate has been running at 16-18 per cent. At that kind of level, a backlog can quickly build up at checkpoints. So why is Birmingham different from similar-sized airports such as Bristol, Newcastle and Edinburgh?

One factor is that Birmingham has a very small proportion of business travellers; these are the individuals who really help an airport, by knowing the rules and being prepared. At Heathrow, about four in 10 passengers are business travellers, which helps to explain why almost everyone gets through security in 10 minutes or less.

Birmingham also has very high levels of passengers who fly only once a year or so, whether on holiday to the Mediterranean or to see family in another country; they are prime candidates for being unaware of/forgetting the “liquids rules”.

Lots of passengers are in family groups. Children, bluntly, add to the chaos in two ways: first, by inadvertently breaching the liquids rules themselves with their favourite soft drink; second, by distracting their parents through the airport process, who are less able to ensure compliance with the liquids rules.

I’ve suggested to the bosses at Birmingham airport that they persuade some or all of the airlines to allow passengers temporarily to check in cabin baggage free of charge. If they could halve the amount of hand luggage being carried through security, then the problem would disappear. But the larger budget airlines are likely to prove highly resistant, because they make a lot of money charging for cabin bags.

Instead, I understand Birmingham will be deploying a big team of people for the summer to help passengers with the liquids issue before they reach the checkpoints – in other words, some analogue pre-screening to speed things up.

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