Have you seriously heard yourself , get a life
” taking TUI to the cleaners “ … blah blah …
no room for you on this forum I am afraid

You do realise that the 3hr threshold for compensation is arrival time and not departure time?

If your flight arrived 3:05 hours late you will be entitled to claim your EU261 delayed flight compensation and also anything else you paid for but didn’t get. However, as to taking TUI to the cleaners, you say the holiday was fantastic so trying to pursue them for anything else could be risky as some companies monitor social media to guard against such claims. Sometimes in aviation delays happen, aircraft break, crew go sick, passengers check in with baggage and mysteriously disappear. Without knowing the facts for the delay to your flight it is difficult to know how well the situation was handled. However, you did get to your destination so a lot of people would have been working incredibly hard to make that happen.

TOM7548 BHX-TFS, on the 13th shows an arrival time of 11:00 in TFS, and it landed TFS at 13:55, so less than 3hours late, so no EU261 delay is applicable. You return TOM7549 TFS-BHX on the 20th, is again showing an Air Tanker A330 flight, due to TUI 788 G-TUIH being at LTN on maintenance, so they are currently a B788 down in their fleet, hence the short term lease of the Air Tanker A330

There's bigger things going on in the world than worrying about being a few hours late to your holiday and having no IFE to watch for 4 hours. You may notice that all around the UK and even part of Europe, there's a huge shortage of airport staff affecting many Airlines, Ground Handlers and Airport/security staffing levels. You are not unique, stop being so precious.

That A330 wouldn't have been cheap to lease, so well done to TUI to keeping your delay minimal. Also as it seems your arrival delay was less than 3 hours, it seems you may only get to give TUI a light dusting rather than "taking them to the cleaners"

Funny then how Jet2, operating in exactly the same environment, manages these things better currently, isn't it ...

Nobody is forcing carriers to schedule beyond their available resources.

Fleet Issues?
 

You do have question TUIs planning since the summer season kicked off from the start of May:-

B789 SE-RFZ operated 01/05/22 - 11/05/22, now in Amman for maintenance
B788 G-TUIH at Luton on maintenance (10/05/22)

B738 G-FDZZ returned from Sunwing lease 07/05/22, at St Athan, not yet re-entered service
B738 G-TAWD returned from Sunwing lease 14/05/22, at Gatwick, not yet re-entered service
B738 G-TAWM returned from Sunwing lease 24/04/22, at St Athan, not yet re-entered service
B738 G-TAWN returned from Sunwing lease 12/05/22, at Birmingham, not yet re-entered service
B738 G-TAWO returned from Sunwing lease 05/05/22, at Brussels, not yet re-entered service
B738 G-TAWP returned from TUI Fly Germany lease 28/04/22, at St Athan, not yet re-entered service
B738 G-TUKP returned from Sunwing lease 26/04/22, at Gatwick, not yet re-entered service

You have to question why the 787 maintenance couldn't have been done in April, and why its taking so long to get the 738s above back in service?

also the leased Sunwing B738 C-FWGH at Cardiff, has now gone tech after only operating one flight, and thus the Paphos flight has been delayed by a day at least!

the joys of running an airline!

I thought TUI Belgium were taking the lead on 787 maintenance and Luton was 737s yet regular 787s position to Luton for work, sometimes parking remotely until they can access the Luton facilities perhaps the bottleneck is at the Belgium facilities?

You’re assuming there’s availability to fix these aircraft on the network or externally. MRO capacity has never been more challenging.

Availability of CAA surveyors for aircraft import is also a major constraint, I’m told. Not sure if this is a factor here but a process which used to take a day or two now takes up to two weeks in our lovely new non-EASA world.

It's also quite a lot of maintenance work to bring the Canadian reg aircraft back into UK spec and yes the surveys have been challenging. But yes they've left things too tight for the start of the summer with no slack in the schedule. Although even if theyd have had full fleet availability I'm not sure they'd have been able to crew them anyway.

With regards the maintenance schedules. You can't just rock up they have to be planned. If the mro can't do it til may then so be it. TUIH Is only a short check and re-config to SH layout. LTN is space constrained. A 787-9 takes up 2 bays hence the 3rd party.

As far as I know BRU hasn't done any 787 major inputs. Just casualty stuff engine changes etc.

Do we know how many B788s are going to be configured into the short layout? Is it just 2, 1 at LGW, 1 at MAN? Which other aircraft will be configured for short haul?

The BRS, BHX, GLA based aircraft all do short haul and long haul, the aircraft that operates from NCL/DSA/BHX is also long haul, and 1 each at LGW & MAN are long haul too.

Don't get me wrong, BHX are at fault for literally everything before departure but TUI'll be charging that departure station for the delay. I completely understand that and will discuss it with them if feeling the need to when returned. (Admittedly posting half-cut probably wasn't the best idea,).
That said, they're clearly operating outside their capabilities this early season and a lot of customers are pissed off. It ain't a good look for them. I can take a 3hr delay to the face I know it happens as I was a dispatcher in a past life, but then Comms and the messing around bokings has been rubbish and way below their usual decent standard.

Instead of trying to take TUI to the cleaners as you put it why not turn your attention to Birmingham Airport and take them to the cleaners :ugh:

Seriously TUI are a top class airline wanting to provide a top class service. They couldn't provide the usual catering because the caterers around the UK haven't the staff to cope with summer demands. Try taking them to the cleaners as well.

I wish you luck in your pursuits but I feel like others on here you won't get very far and you may be taken to the cleaners instead.

Been keeping an eye on the TUI NCL movements on FR24 and if I was still standing on the airport roof - and getting regs for a log book (1980’s esque ) would love the variety of aircraft visiting and swapping. In other years TUI have usually based 3 737’s and swapped them every few months at most. Bearing in mind the comments above is there a specific reason for all these swaps this year. Is it more engineers available at NCL than elsewhere, or less engineers available so aircraft can’t stay long or any other reasons (some insight would be interesting pleae).

Sometimes it's more to do with hours that an aircraft is flying, swapping it out of NCL to say LGW means it could over a week save 10 hours on flights over the course of 7 days and 2 sectors each - given the much shorter flight times from LGW than NCL.

Other times it's required a hanger input/visit (basically like your car service) which NCL doesn't have or requires a service check which again NCL engineers don't have the facility to do.

Some of the time the aircraft is flying around with a defect (Or ADD) and is flying in accordance to the MEL (minimum equipment list) which is all find and dandy. However they do have limits (hours/cycles) and some airlines will push these defects up until the limit of these limits before fixing the defect providing they can not be done in base. Sometimes a defect can be cleared in base such as NCL but engineers may request it to be somewhere they have heavy MX facilities incase the problem could result in further investigations/problems arising and therefore the aircraft been effectively grounded. Better to do that where you have heavy MX facilities than do it where you don't.

Doubt its NCL related - TUI Ops just seem to be trying to keep the plates spinning at the moment...

Thanks for the above comments.

just one further “out of interest” query, how does it work for the crews? There may be aircraft changes scheduled in advance but for others how far in advance do crews get notice? So for example if a NCL and MAN based 738 need to swap for a maintenance issue would the crews change aircraft at the outstation so that they end up back at their base but on a different aircraft or could the crew on the aircraft just be told they are going back to MAN rather than NCL. Always wondered!

There is never a "based aircraft", it won't stay in one base for the whole summer, or even a month!

They can be exchanged downroute where the crews will swop onto the other one, or they are just ferried (empty) where they might be needed.

There are various reasons why they keep changing, but the concept of a 1 airframe being based at any TUI airport has never been the truth and never will be.

It depends on what sort of swapping they are doing. Ideally, operationally and from a money perspective, they would want to swap it "down route" whereby the crews from NCL/MAN in your scenario arrive and depart at the same time. They arrive, swap over, and aircraft go back to new bases crew back to their own bases. Makes it cheaper/easier for crews too. Passengers will notice not a blind bit of difference.

Sometimes you may look and go what the hell is going on when they do a three way swap. This could be that the NCL/MAN flying programmes are not aligned. So they may swap an AC that is CWL based first then CWL/MAN swap later in the week. It all depends how aligned the programmes/flying is aligned with other bases. I would say only last resort do airlines position something. Certainly where I work it's not frowned upon but we are encouraged to do our very best to just straight swap things about.