Flights to Alicante

There has been talk but mainly from airlines, officially there are too many "if's" to get past before any announcement can be made. We are only coming out of the lockdown with baby steps and it was always stricter than the UK here anyway so the last thing we want is to start letting people in before there are 100% accurate testing procedures and/or a vaccine is developed or it dies out on its own. At the moment the UK FCO advice is essential travel only and the UK is about 2 weeks behind Spain but all we can do at the moment is follow advice and hope we all don't get hit with a second wave. If a second wave doesn't arrive, then I think borders can start to re-open. Only my opinion.

Edit: The government want to extend the emergency from May 25th for a month which is hoped to be the last extension.

I received an email from Ryanair a couple of days ago saying you can book flights from July 1st:

https://www.ryanair.com/gb/en/plan-trip/explore/Lets-Fly?utm_source=crm&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=cmpid%3Demail_R_FLIGHTTACT_LF150520_gb_noab_nodiv_nop_nols

Personally, I wouldn't advise anyone to book any flights from the UK with any of the (allegedly) "low cost" airlines for the foreseeable.

They have no idea when things will relax & are hanging onto what capital do still have in their accounts like grim death.

You can't blame them but it is a bit galling when Ryanair offer you a refund which you accept & they then tell you they've changed their minds but you can have a voucher if you like instead, as has happened to us (& thousands of others.)

All we can do is wait it all out & cross our fingers but as I said, knowing what we know now, anyone who books a flight for this year wants their bumps feeling in my honest opinion.

Morning Jim, my daughter received her cancellation e-mail from Ryanair for flights to Alicante for the end of June. As Sanchez has said he wants to extend the emergency to 25th June this could be a sign, but if we have a second wave it will all have to tighten up again.

 I've advised her not to accept the voucher and wait the year out for the refund (if it ever comes at all) because O'Leary made a separate statement that Ryanair will not be flying to the Costa Blanca or Costa del Sol for the foreseeable from the UK. As for offering flights I still think they are clutching at straws and trying to keep an income flow. I also think O'Leary is making threats to try to force concessions from Spain and wouldn't want to give up what must be lucrative routes.

Time will tell.

Hi "Stan",

Long time, no hear, I hope you're well  :o)

Not much in the way of compensation for you, but it's not just the "low-cost" airlines walking the high wire, resisting requests for refunds.  We have friends who had 4 sets of flights booked with British Airways this year, 2 lots to visit us in Spain - they've all been cancelled and our friends were offered vouchers instead of a refund.  They were happy to accept vouchers until they tried to rebook flights to Spain in September, only to find that BA's route from Gatwick to Alicante is no longer available.  Only time will tell whether BA have actually relinquished that route altogether......

Kind regards,

Kim

Morning Kim

It’s really frustrating with the airlines

I don’t know why, but I expect better of BA. Won’t bore you with the details but prior to returning to the U.K. on a repatriation flight recently, in addition to my original return flights, I ended up booking two additional return flights in an effort to get back. All were cancelled. I accept a major difficulty for them was the airspace being closed in addition to the lockdown. I managed to secure refunds for them when I returned home, other than a small cost for an internal flight, which wasn’t, at the point of the claim, cancelled. Then came 12000 redundancies and the chances of contacting them by phone reduced to almost nil. 

It does appear that, being unable to get through to them by phone is driving people to accept vouchers, if only, in their minds to “sort it”. 

Setting aside the wisdom, in the U.K., of the “return to work if you can” advice, maybe there will now be someone to man the phones and proceed agreed refunds, regardless of which ailine

I suspect that might be wishful thinking but I remain optimistic 🤪🥂

It is fair to say that currently, everything is pure speculation and there is no official date for flights to recommence.

What you can be assured of is that as soon as O'Leary can charge to move folk he will do! 

Personally, I would recommend against booking any flights until such time that you can officially travel, but that is just my take on it.