Megabear2

Very sensible not to get involved! The flight left a short time ago scheduled to arrive around 1.00am and depart 3.00am so you may well be right about sitting at the airport for a while. Will this impact your scheduled departure or did they not say anything?

They are used to cut the way into forests for agricultural workers, unlike here where we have no legitimate use for them!

Marvellous. I shall look into it. Thank you.

My words - I said damage by association, not damage as in P&O ferries style. Lots of misguided people have been constantly blaming P&O for Maleth since the announcement in September and unfortunately in some cases mud sticks. If I was P&O and my contractor had breached its contract multiple times as Moley says I would definitely state to them their failures have damaged my brand by association. Following Mr Ludlow's 'X' chat with the travel agents lots of them stated that people were holding off booking Caribbean fly cruises due to the Maleth situation. That indicates some doubt by the public and I'd class that as damage.

It's been saying that since lunchtime which was why I was surprised to be told passengers are in a hotel to leave tomorrow. Antigua departures showing 2.55am tomorrow for return.

I assume P&O are seeking legal recourse in that case as the damage to their brand by association has been pretty alarming? Meantime the passengers continue to be the ones inconvenienced and suffering and everyone is still shrugging their shoulders.

Moving on things are looking pretty bad today. Any idea what's happening in Antigua with those with no aircraft home today? The last time this happened it was appalling. I'd it any better this time?

Crumbs. What happened to 8.00pm? Antigua departure was showing as 2.55am on Flightradar24 which was worrying for the Arvia returnees. Tye last Antigua delay/cancellation was a nightmare for the passengers. I hope they are also being looked after this time.

All this talk of York leads me to ask I have been invited to visit a couple of my horses stabled in Malton. I've not a clue where that is in relation to places I've been before! Any advice on where I should look to stay much appreciated. I intend to do a mini roadtrip breaking my journey along the way. I have friends in Nottingysmshire but thought I'd stay somewhere after that and perhaps look stay a day or two after the stable visit in Yorkshire. All ideas gratefully received. It will be early May.

Thank you. Yes, much better this week thankfully.

13th December so over Christmas. We are doing 35 nights on Queen Mary 2 on January 11th but decided to go for Christmas on a whim. Surprisingly good price for Christmas and we had some freebies for our next cruise gifted by P&O. All in has cost nearly £1700 less than last year but we do not have a deluxe cabin.

ICF, if you're passing through are you able to give us an update on what's happening onboard re the passengers scheduled to leave Arvia today in Antigua. It appears the Manchester Maleth flight which should have left this morning is delayed to 8.00pm this evening and I just wondered how it's being handled onboard. Hope you're having a brilliant holiday. Looking forward to hearing about it when you get back!

There's also a lot of pride in these churches which are often the centre of village life. In Barbados for instance there's traditionally a rum shack immediately next door to the church to facilitate celebration after the services. Most of the "traditional" islands have a very high percentage of church goers.

I'm sorry you had such a bad experience. Whilst having a lot of sympathy with all those affected by the dreadful delays they can and do happen regularly on far more well known airlines, unfortunately it is in particular a post pandemic problem with lack of aircraft. I assume if you felt unsafe you had the misfortune to be on the flight which encountered severe turbulence which must have been extremely frightening. As to the business contract who is to say how many aircraft P&O's flight agent asked to be available. If it was the bare minimum to move everyone on a set schedule then that is not Maleth's error as the agent must be aware aircraft go out of service and should have ensured that the necessary spare planes were available. The knock on from the damaged aircraft being stranded was clearly huge and affected a very large number of flights. If on the other hand the three aircraft were all that were available due to Maleth's other commitments then P&O's aircraft procurement team should have pointed out to their client P&O the risk involved and P&O consider whether it was wise to attempt the full programme for the season whilst literally flying by the seat of their pants. They could perhaps have allowed those who wanted to cancel after the announcement of no premium economy to do so without loss of deposit or even halted sales, particularly of the 7 day Arvia cruises. Hindsight is a wonderful thing but truthfully the whole thing has been a dog's dinner in how it has been handled and the very least P&O can do is assist those claiming their legal entitlement from Maleth by applying commercial pressure. At the end of the day the only ones losing here are their customers and this is not just of Maleth's making.

Late 24.

I was offered the dubious option of enjoying his bamboo by the guy with the wave runners while negotiating a price. When I declined politely (I had no idea what he was referring to) he gave me a can of Dragon stout for my OH as it would make him have good bamboo too and I exited red faced when it dawned on me what I'd been discussing!

Good to hear. We found it that way too.

The amount of compensation owing will be very high. So far none has been paid from what we can see. Unless P&O paid them an absolute fortune Maleth will probably rue the day they ever took the contract. From being an unknown airline they have unfortunately become the devil incarnate on some websites (not here thankfully) with any slight normal problem being highlighted and magnified as a "disaster". I too feel a little sorry for them, it isn't their fault they were the only available airline and unfortunately they have just been out of their depth particularly after the CAT incident which made the lack of aircraft even more acute.

Yes, that was confirmed some time ago. Paul Ludlow announced to the trade in the week that P&O will be announcing their additional partner shortly so clearly there will be another airline announcement shortly. I booked a Britannia fly cruise this week and my flight is already confirmed as TUI - I took the last two premium seats and availability in cabins was also quite restricted.

You must be reading my mind! I'm looking at the Aurora cruise a week or so later and was also going to ask for views on weather, ports etc. Perhaps the nice Scandinavian experts could give both of us their views on general aspects. Regarding Britannia she is my favourite P&O ship and although I have no experience with children personally on all my cruises on her thr children and families all sem to be very happy with the offering. I assume you are referring to there being no internal pool as your worry in inclement weather. Apart from this I'd say that Britannia would offer the same sort of facilities as Ventura. I have sailed Arvia and would say apart from the indoor pool offering Britannia's are superior being considerably larger and less crowded.

I hope your Mum feels better soon. It's good to know that her home and medics erred on the side of caution as bumps to the head are always tricky to decide on whether to seek medical help or not. They sound so trivial but we should be less blasé really.

I can well imagine they aren't, Jamaica being only second to Haiti as the poorest country in the entire Caribbean. Back in the mid 80's we spent a week in Ochos Rios after the US started the trade embargo against them when the Jamaica government did a deal to sell sugar and bananas to Russia. There were green mouldy loaves on the shelves of the local shop with people queuing to buy them. A very sad sight based on some misguided political choices. The people back then were stoic and incredibly friendly and welcoming, unfortunately not I hear so much now. Hopefully Tortola will be made in time. You are certainly having some great adventures!

Interesting article from the trade press yesterday. https://travelweekly.co.uk/news/air/po-cruises-president-says-talks-ongoing-over-caribbean-airline-partner

Did you go to see the offshore registration building with the plaques showing you who had investments? I found it fascinating to see they'd run out of space! The tour guide was very proud to show us Mick Jagger and Bono in particular but I was astonished at how many individuals names I recognised and the really interesting one was the Welsh village who were making a protest to the UK government. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/crickhowell-inside-the-welsh-town-that-took-itself-offshore-in-tax-protest-a6752511.html

The cost of living in the Cayman Islands is extremely high. I can recall in 2014 watching a lady in a supermarket buy a box of 10 fish fingers for a sum I calculated to be around US$15. I dread to think how much now. This website gives interesting information on cost of living for people considering relocating to live permanently, I find it very interesting to get a rough idea of basic costs when I travel. https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/country_result.jsp?country=Cayman+Islands&displayCurrency=USD