Have I been bounced off an AirTransat flight?

Question

A month ago I booked a connecting return flight MAN>TORONTO>HOLGUIN departing 23rd March with Air Transat.

I’ve just had a call from the airline to say that due to a schedule change the outbound flight is no longer available and I can either accept re-booking onto the same itinerary on 16 March or a full refund. My return flight on 26/4 is apparently unaffected.

The Air Transat agent said she had tried to call me about the change a few days ago (I had a missed call from an unknown international number on 31 Jan) but did not leave a messsge or follow up with an email at that point. In the meantime I went ahead and booked non-refundable hotel accommodation at Manchester for the night of 22nd March.

As far as I can see in the Air Transat app, my original flight is still available to book, which I find puzzling, even suspicious.

Can anyone shed any light? Am I being bounced under the pretext of a schedule change? If so, why? And is there anything I can do (other than accept the change or cancel)?

Answer 1

Your original flight is not available for booking anymore. What you show in the screenshot is only the leg fram Manchester to Toronto, which indeed is operated on March 23rd.

Air Transat is still flying from Toronto to Holguin on March 23rd, but has changed the departure time from 16:15 to 12:35. Your flight from Manchester to Toronto is scheduled to land 11:50 and the new transfer time of only 45 minutes is obviously too short for Transat to sell a connecting itinerary. If you fly from Manchester to Toronto on March 23rd, you will with the new schedule not be able to reach an Air Transat flight to Holguin until March 27th. That is obviosuly too long for them to sell a through ticket.

So, assuming that Air Transat's web page offer the same flights as in the app (I have no reason to believe anything else), the agent calling you is completely right.

If I haven't missed any recent changes, UK air passenger's rights are still based on the relevant EU regulation and the air line has informed you about the change well enough in advance, so that they are not liable for anything more than to offer you either a rerouting or a refund, which they according to you have done.

Buying a through ticket, which combines multiple legs with very infrequent departures, in this case there is only one weekly flight from Manchester to Toronto and three weekly flights from Toronto to Holguin, makes you of course very susceptible to even minor changes in the schedule.