[houdini]

Our flight from Calgary to London Gatwick was delayed on the runway due to the fact that no gates were available to use once we arrived in London. This caused us to be late, by approx. five minutes (40 min. before our flight was due to leave), for our Ukrainian Airlines flight to Tel Aviv and consequently we were told by the UIA check-in staff that they had just closed the gate and would not check us in.

This didn't make any sense because the agents were still at the check-in desk to receive passengers and said they JUST closed the gate. They told us we would need to talk to the customer service people at SkyBreak to re-book flights to Tel Aviv. Our return flights from Tel Aviv back to London were also cancelled, much to our dismay, and we were forced to re-book those as well. Both flights were charged at a much higher rate than we originally booked.

For the outbound flight to Tel Aviv, we were forced to pay for Business Class seating even though there were plenty of seats in Coach that we could have purchased. We were told that there were no seats available in coach, and then discovered there was plenty of room in coach that we could have purchased at a much lower rate.

In the end, we paid for our original flight plus the re-scheduled flights. We have asked UIA for reimbursement for our re-scheduled flights that we were forced to purchase. We have been waiting for 6 months and have not received an response from UIA.

Our original round trip flights from London Gatwick to Tel Aviv cost us $856.83 CAD. The additional costs for the "new" flights cost us $2235.37 ($1826.26 +$409.11). In total, we ended up paying $3092.20 CAD for two return flights from London Gatwick to Tel Aviv.

When a customer misses a flight due to circumstances beyond their control, airlines usually put them on the next available flight at no cost to the passenger. As customers of UIA, we were honoring our commitment to fly with them and were acting in good faith. Most airlines recognize this unfortunate inconvenience and treat their customers with respect and courtesy. Apparently not UIA!

We are asking Ukrainian International Airlines to do the right thing and reimburse us for the additional costs ($2235.37 CAD) that we were forced to incur in order to reach our destination. Not only did we have to pay an exorbitant amount of money to fly out later, but we lost a day of holidays having to sleep at the airport, because their agents at the gate wouldn't allow us on our originally scheduled flight with time to spare.