Travel question: Flight changes have eaten into our resort time – is this fair?

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To fill its schedules, Tui has chartered in capacity from airlines based abroad (Getty)

Q Our Tui holiday flights have been changed. Instead of departing the UK at 6am we are now leaving at 3.45pm – losing 10 hours, including an afternoon poolside and an evening meal. That wouldn’t be too bad if we got it back at the end of the holiday. But the homeward flight has been moved only from 12.05pm to 12.50pm. So we don’t get any meaningful extra time in the resort.

The travel company considers this acceptable. Do you?

Paul W

A While schedule changes are commonplace for package holidays, in your position I would be very annoyed. From the schedule you outline, it appears to me that a British-based aircraft has been replaced by one based abroad. Most UK-originating package holidays involve a plane starting its day at a British airport. This gives all the passengers a full week (or fortnight) abroad: I’m guessing your original arrival time at the destination was 11.05am, with the inbound departure an hour later. In a “normal” schedule change, the outward and return legs are shifted by the same amount, preserving the amount of time you have abroad.

But the replacement is starting its journey abroad, at 12.50pm, arriving in the UK at, say, 2.45pm and flying back an hour later with you on board, arriving at about 9pm (all times local). So you lose 10 hours of the first day, and on the last day gain a paltry 45 minutes (and I bet you have to clear out of your resort straight after breakfast anyway).

The reason for such a drastic case is, I imagine, something to do with the worldwide grounding of the Boeing 737 Max aircraft, after two awful crashes which cost 346 lives. Tui’s UK operation had five Max planes at the time of the grounding, and was planning to be flying more this summer.

To fill the gaps in its schedules, Tui has chartered in capacity from other airlines, including some based abroad. This introduces all kinds of logistical issues, which appear to have combined to your detriment.

At the time you booked the holiday, you agreed that only “a change in the time of your departure or return flight by more than 12 hours” amounted to a “significant change” for which Tui would have offer remedies. So I cannot see that you have any legal options.

All I can suggest is that you relish the one benefit of a flight pattern like this: you will not need to leave the house ridiculously early to get the outbound departure.

Every day our travel correspondent Simon Calder tackles a reader’s question. Just email yours to s@hols.tv or tweet @simoncalder