Volcanic ash entitlements

Hope someone can help clarify what if any my entitlements for compensation are in the following scenario. Have had contact with airline but they are just asking me to submit expenses but have not clarified what days they will cover

Initial flight cancelled and replacement flight offered 2 days later.

This flight also cancelled and booked next available flight 5 days later (7 days after original flight). Decided to make alternative arrangements and did not use flights.

I had fairly similar situation ie. I made alternative arrangements to get back to work asap.

Ryanair have a form onsite for you to write in your details & then fax to them. Presume other airlines have something similar. They will give it the official stamp and then you can sent it to your Insurance Company. They confirmed that my refund from them is €45 - the price of the return portion of my flight.

Hopefully my Insurance Co will be a bit kinder. I was delayed for 7 days like yourself and also took a train to get an earlier flight. Ended up quite costly!

I think airlines are not liable if you "broke the terms of your contract" with them. My sisters are being taken care of by Ryanair as they waited for the next available flight.

Just re-read your post. Was it the Outward flight that was cancelled? I think then you should be entitled to a refund for this flight.

Hope this helps.

Thanks for your reply. It was the return journey, cost us about 1500E in total to get home. While we was not expecting any refund, we would have travelled with them if we could have got an earlier flight. It seems a bit unfair in this context that if we were offered an earlier flight that we would have accepted, we would get compensation, but because the offered flight was much later and we chose to get home earlier by alternate means we loose out.

It does seem a bit unfair. After all my hassle I only arrived home a day earlier than the others!
Did you try the insurance co? I thought at first that natural disasters were excluded but they are accepting claims provided you were in the first lot of casualties. I was due to fly home on April 15th, the very first day of cancellations. Fingers X. Hope you can find some way. My experience was with Ryanair, maybe other airlines have a different policy.