CAA action to recover money from unlawful sales

The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) has announced that it will take action to recovery money from agents who illegally sold flights on failed XL Leisure carriers as part of travel packaged with accommodation and other services.

In a statement issued late last week, it explained that transportation on Freedom Flights and Pure Flights, both part of the collapsed XL Leisure group and both holding ATOLs, had been sold by agents to the public, as part of travel packages.

According to the CAA, in many cases claims for compensation after the XL failure have come from customers who purchased their accommodation or other travel services from an agent, when they purchased their flights.

The authority maintains that these “combination” sales were unlawful because the nature of the transactions constituted packaged sales.

“In the view of the Trustees and the CAA, under the ATOL Regulations, the agents who made these sales and who received payment from the customer for the package should have contracted the whole package under one contract between the customer and an ATOL holder,” the statement noted.

The CAA will be issuing refunds directly to the customers for the cost of the booked flights, in order to prevent further delay to them in recovering their money and to avoid customers incurring involving in pursuing legal recourse.

It added that action will be taken against the agents making the illegal sales in order to recover the money for the ATT.

Thanks to www.travelmole.com for the above quotes, for more information on this article please visit their website.

www.caa.co.uk