Airline Delays what are the rules now?

gingerdad

Does any one know what the current EU or CAA Rules on delayed flights, we were delayed for 4 hours yesterday due to a tech fault.....

Woby_Tide

Delayed flights: Passengers who are delayed the airlines are now obliged to offer meals and refreshments as well as lodging if an overnight stay is necessary.

Passengers with flights of 1,500 km or less who are delayed for two hours or more should be given meals and refreshments and two free telephone calls, e-mails or faxes.

Passengers with flights between 1,500 and 3,500 km with delays for three hours or more and for all longer flights delayed for four hours or more, should be given meals and refreshments and two free telephone calls, e-mails or faxes.

When the delay is at least five hours passengers are entitled to a refund of their ticket and a free return flight to the point of origin should the flight no longer serve any purpose. Otherwise the airlines are required to reroute passengers to their final destination. Again, meals, refreshments, lodging, phone and email are required at airline’s expense, if necessary.

gingerdad

Funnily the bumped the passengers of the next flight to keep us under the 5 hours.......

GD

waster_2

Basically the rules are so grey that you will get nothing, even if delayed by 12 hours or more. The airlines will claim everything was outside their control and therefore they are not responsible for anything.

alared

I was delayed 2hours 55mins coming back from Jersey.
Told that you needed to be delayed for three hours before you can claim anything.

budgetflyer

Was delayed 17 hours with air-scotland. As it involved overnight,after a bit of polite reminding of our EU rights ,they put us up in Holiday inn. gave us £10 meal vouchers each and following morning another £6 each vouchers for breakfast.
You can download and print your passenger rights at

http://www.caa.co.uk/default.aspx?categoryid=306&pagetype=90&pageid=4408

certainly came in handy for me
Now an essential item of my travel kit

Most_Wanted

Was delayed by Air India (avoid like the plague) on outbound journey by 16 hours. They put me in hotel, only gave dinner, no breakfast(although the flight left the next morning at 11am).
Then beat this, on the return journey they had 'missing aircraft' which resulted in a 3 hour delay. They *claim* they sent me an email to inform me of the delay which is complete nonsense. I missed my connecting flight.

I complained and demanded Euro400 compensation according to EU legislation - they say that since they gave me hotel accomodation they will not give me a single penny.

Can they get away with this?

almond

hi
thought I would explain what happened to me.
Booked bwia flights to barbados due to travel 1st may from manchester
thursday 28th april checked flights and found it cancelled and rebooked
me from london heathrow 2nd may.
Friday morning tried to get bwia to explain and pay for flight to london
which they would agree but only manchester which is a two hour trip.
On holiday rang to reconfirm my flights and told cancelled and was coming
back a day early. Well to cut a long story short no way so they brought
us back business class with british midland.
I then started a claim under the eec rules - it took till the end of august
to get sorted but we each received a cheque for £402 = 600 euros
I have a letter from bwia which I have kept just incase anybody needs
help I can try. I did not pay full rate for these fares. The letter did state
if they make a change within two weeks of travel we can claim.

wolvoman

gingerdad wrote:

Funnily the bumped the passengers of the next flight to keep us under the 5 hours.......

GD

Which just reinforces how stupid and pointless these EU flight delay rules are. Instead of one flight load of passengers being affected by a delay, you have several flights affected. No doubt this thinking didn't even enter the minds of beaurocrats when they thought up this scheme.

WiseInvestor_2

Oh dear. It would appear I spoke out of turn for which I can only apologise!

I'm just not sure how much more accomodating BWIA could've been in this instance without then being confronted with a further financial penalty. Without doubt, the compensation paid out to Almond will be recovered from some other traveller; profits don't suffer - prices do! Is that being "nice to moneysavers"?

Is that fair on everyone else and is it conducive to cheap travel for all of us in future?

Delays and cancellations are terribly inconvenient and if you'd missed a funeral (for example) I'd show every sympathy and support for your cause. But at the end of the day no-one died, everyone was safe, you got to enjoy your holiday (eventually) and you had a lovely Business Class seat for a 10-hour night flight coming home. Next we'll be sueing accident victims for the resulting traffic jams delaying us getting home at night!

There have been countless complaints on MSE about how badly passengers are treated by the airlines with very little information when a problem arises or how long it will take to resolve. I know for a fact that many UK airlines now instruct their front line staff NOT to commit to a cause or timescale due to compensation issues; passengers are now referred to the Customer Services department who (after the event!) have access to the full picture as to what happened and how they should deal with the outcome.

As (I hope) you can see, whilst the EU regulations are still very much in their infancy, the actions of a few have already affected everyone when all we really want is the truth - the airlines will find a way to protect themselves and, IMO, Almond has not helped matters

Former_MSE_Forum_Manager

WiseInvestor wrote:

Oh dear. It would appear I spoke out of turn for which I can only apologise!

Having looked over this thread, I can certainly see both sides of the arguement, and whilst initial comments by WiseInvestor were not friendly, the Forum Team appreciate his apology (as I hope others on this thread do), and also would like to note that the way the above comments has been made is far more in line with what we like to see on MSE.

We have no problem with people having differing views, but getting personal is not the way to go. If we deal in facts and considered viewpoints, rather than, perhaps, knee jerk reactions, it is possible to have this discussion without upsetting anyone.