Flight change - arghh!

[tigwig]

My wonderful parents have spent an obscene amount of money and are treating myself, my sister and our families to an all inclusive holiday to the Dom Rep this Christmas. Yesterday we all received a letter from the tour company advising us that the outbound flight was changing aircraft and now there will be a smaller seat pitch by 4 bloody inches and no seat back entertainment. My mum spent nearly an hour on the phone to them and eventually was told that the original aircraft was going in for maintenance. I mean why would they do this on one of the busiest weeks of the year? It doesn't make sense to us at all. They have said we can select an alternative flight (with them and subject to availability) but there is no way there would be availability for 9 people with such short notice and with only 1 flight a day leaving from our chosen airport its a case of put up with it. We have written a letter of complaint but it won't change anything. I am presuming they can get away with this even though the picture in the brochure clearly shows a bigger aircraft with the seat back tv's and it states the seat pitch on the invoices which would have been 33 inches not 29. Can anyone advise if there's anything we can do about this?

[237SJ]

Well you could just see if they do have the availability on another day but if you have to travel on that specific day there`s not much you can do about it I`m afraid. The airline`s obligation is to get you from a to b and they are doing that regardless of the type of aircraft. Writing in as you have done is the best thing to do though. You never know, they might give you some money off vouchers or some such as a form of compensation