Thomas Cook Airlines (powered by Condor) > Reviews > The Worst Journey Ever

Author's product rating:   

Food Quality	Poor
Customer Service	Unhelpful
Punctuality	Awful
Space	Terrible
Value for Money	Poor

Advantages:	none
Disadvantages:	Long delays, bad legroom , badly organised

Recommend to potential buyers:

no

Full review

I have been on holiday over 20 times in the last 5 years and this year I flew with Thomas Cook Airlines for the first time. I went to Varadero in Cuba for one week and when I arrived at the airport in Manchester, I was told there was an 8.5 hour delay!!! All we were offered was some lunch and £6 of airport vouchers. When you have a 10 hour flight after this long delay, it's a whole day lost of your holiday. The staff were so disinterested when we tried to explain this as the holiday cost a lot and losing one day out of seven with no compensation is unfair.
They knew about the delay 2 days before our flight but did not contact passengers to ask us to turn up later. Instead, they insisted we all checked in at the original time and stay in the airport for 8.5 hours.

After boarding the plane, they then told us the passenger headcount was wrong so that delayed us for another 1.5 hours.

After a long, cramped and uncomfortable flight, we finally arrived at our hotel at 2am instead of 3pm the day before.

On the way home, we were right to worry about the flight. After borading on time, they said there was ANOTHER problem with the passenger headcount. After 3 hours, they made us all get off and on the plane again. We heard from other passengers who had arrived the week before us that this headcount problem happened on their flights too.
Thomas Cook do 2 drop-offs in Cuba, therefore creating problems with headcounts and duplicate seat numbers for passengers. The whole thing was a shambles and then the attitude of the staff when people tried to complain made the whole thing worse.
I have sent a letter of complaint but I think it's disgusting not to give compensation to people when they have lost one whole day of their holiday. We are not getting what we have paid for and it's about time the law gave passengers more rights against these charter airlines who treat you like a herd of cattle.