Hi,
Just an update. Croatia Airlines have now paid €250 (£224) into my bank account as compensation for my cancelled flight. My travel insurance will not pay anything so I'm still £100 out of pocket altogether. I'm happy with Croatia Airlines, and Resolver and the Martin Lewis website, but not so much with JY who wanted nothing to do with it and offered no help/guidance whatsoever.
Going forward I have a few options as I'm not going through this again if I can help it, that is to only choose holidays where all flights are with BA so hopefully they'll be responsible for getting me home without me incurring further expense, booking overnight hotel stays both before and after my holiday, though this would be no good if some other event occurred whereby I was delayed getting back into the UK by a longer duration (i.e. Hurricane, Ash cloud etc), or, my preferred option, only fly from my local airport, especially for short haul tours, as at least then it means I'll be covered from door to door via the ATOL scheme.
It's a shame as there were so many holidays I wanted to do, but I'm not running the risk of this happening again, especially when I was effectively on my own. I worry had I not been able to get on that last flight of the night I would have been stranded in Heathrow overnight or had even more added expense for hotel accommodation and transport between the hotel and airport ?. The reason I book with a travel company, and pay a fortune to do it, is so that I am looked after and feel safe in the knowledge they will help me if anything goes wrong, I was left feeling very disappointed with JY.
Regards
Caroline