23/09/2019
Reclaiming your flight money.
There are four options for recovering the money you paid to Thomas Cook for your flight:
If you paid for your flight by credit card
1 If you paid by credit card you are covered under section 75 of the consumer credit act. This however is time limited and you will need to contact your Credit Card company as soon as possible.
If you paid for your flight by debit card
2 If you booked through a secondary provider such as Opodo, they may be covered, and you will need to contact your provider. If this is the case you are covered under the ATOL scheme
3 Check with your travel insurance provider.
4 Contact your bank, some banks have schemes that protect you.
Martin Lewis has this to say (links provided in comments)
Paid by credit or debit card? You may be able to claim from your card provider
Even if your trip isn't covered by ATOL or ABTA, you could still have some protection if you paid for your booking using a debit or credit card:
If you paid by credit card for a holiday or a flight costing £100+, you should have Section 75 protection if you paid Thomas Cook - but if you paid a travel agent you may not. Section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act means if you pay for something costing £100-£30,000 on a credit card, the card company's equally liable if something goes wrong - so you may be able to claim your money back from it. For more info on how this works, see our Section 75 guide.
However if you booked via a travel agent, it's more complicated. Technically for Section 75 to work, there must be a direct link between the debtor (that's you, the customer), the creditor (the credit card company) and the supplier (in this case, Thomas Cook). If you booked via a travel agent, it's likely that relationship could be deemed to be broken which would mean you wouldn't be able to claim, though the Financial Ombudsman Service told us it would come down to the exact nature of your contract with the travel agent.
For a flight or booking costing less than £100, or if you paid by debit card, you might be able to claim money back from your card provider through the chargeback scheme instead.
Unlike Section 75, the chargeback scheme isn't a legal requirement, it's just a customer service promise. But we've seen successful claims from people using it when firms have collapsed in the past, and crucially there doesn't need to be the direct link between the product paid for and the debt as with Section 75. See our Chargeback guide for full details.
