‘When an airline is responsible for a flight delay, it is this airline that is in charge of providing passengers with meals and accommodation for the night. This is what the Aviation Code states. The travel agents, on their part, must notify the hotels of the delay and make sure the reservations don’t get canceled. They must also inform the hosting party of the arrival time so that transfer from the airport to the hotels could be provided,’ the Director of OOO Inna-tour Inna Averyanova explained to UrBC.

Now I-Fly Airlines had two of its flights (RSY-9536 Antalya-Yekaterinburg and RSY-9539 Yekaterinburg-Sharm El Sheikh) delayed by more than twenty-four hours. The second flight in question has already taken off, while the plane from Antalya is to land in Yekaterinburg at 4:00 PM. The delay was caused by some technical deficiencies of the airplanes.

‘A tour operator is obliged to make up for the expenses incurred by the passengers during a day at the airport or to extend the vacation by the same time the travelers lost there. However, in most cases the tour operator gives the money for the services not rendered back to the travel agents, who, in their turn, give this money back to the customers. As for the tour operator, its losses must be compensated by the airline, although the scale and other aspects of this compensation depend on the specific agreement the tour operator and the airline sign, Ms Averyanova added.

In the meantime, federal media claim that I-Fly actually belongs to companies affiliated with TEZ Tour.