Ryanair imposes compensation surcharge

richardw

shaun_from_Africa wrote: »

There is already an exclusion to compensation having to be paid for "extraordinary circumstances", and both weather and strikes are covered by this.

but don't forget the "reasonable measures" as Recital 14 and 15 of regulation EC261/2004

(14) As under the Montreal Convention, obligations on operating air carriers should be limited or excluded in cases where an event has been caused by extraordinary circumstances which could not have been avoided even if all reasonable measures had been taken. Such circumstances may, in particular, occur in cases of political instability, meteorological conditions incompatible with the operation of the flight concerned, security risks, unexpected flight safety shortcomings and strikes that affect the operation of an operating air carrier.
(15) Extraordinary circumstances should be deemed to exist where the impact of an air traffic management decision in relation to a particular aircraft on a particular day gives rise to a long delay, an overnight delay, or the cancellation of one or more flights by that aircraft, even though all reasonable measures had been taken by the air carrier concerned to avoid the delays or cancellations.

whatmichaelsays

I'm actually with O'Leary on this one. Ryanair is being forced to pay significant bills for factors well beyond their control - why?

Ryanair doesn't cause volcanic explosions, it doesn't close down UK airspace and it doesn't cause Spanish ATC strikes, yet it has to pick up the tab for them? I know that few will have sympathy for O'Leary but at the end of the day, he has a perfectly valid point.

shaun_from_Africa

Ryanair doesn't cause volcanic explosions, it doesn't close down UK airspace and it doesn't cause Spanish ATC strikes, yet it has to pick up the tab for them? I know that few will have sympathy for O'Leary but at the end of the day, he has a perfectly valid point.

I would agree with this provided that it went both ways.
If I miss a flight due to traffic delays, rail strikes etc, I will lose the cost of the ticket, so surely if Ryan air don't want to lose out for something that is out of their control their passengers should have the same rights.

lewroll

How about when an airline cancels their flights for their own reasons? Economics etc. They should pay for that not other passengers albeit only £2. And what says that it will stop at £2 and not go up and up and up?

Pelican_eats_pigeon

whatmichaelsays wrote: »

I'm actually with O'Leary on this one. Ryanair is being forced to pay significant bills for factors well beyond their control - why?

Ryanair doesn't cause volcanic explosions, it doesn't close down UK airspace and it doesn't cause Spanish ATC strikes, yet it has to pick up the tab for them? I know that few will have sympathy for O'Leary but at the end of the day, he has a perfectly valid point.

The airlines are better placed from an organisational perspective to assess the risks of such occurrences and are better placed from a financial perspective to take the hit of hotel/food costs, which to your average passenger could easily be financially crippling.

To remove this burden from airlines and pass them to the passengers would also be essentially saying that corporations have more in the way of rights than people, not a good move by any stretch of the imagination.

The airlines are well aware of the rules and have always been passing on the cost of this risk to the passengers, O'Leary's stunt here is just political grandstanding.

stoneman

In a round about way this has been discussed over on a cruise forum. European customers pay more for air tickets and cruises than our American counterparts going through the same airline/cruise. This has generally been attributed to the fact that we have better rights of compensation/duty of care than they do, so the U.S. companies have to factor these into the prices when dealing with U.K customers.

dmg24

Pelican_eats_pigeon wrote: »

The airlines are better placed from an organisational perspective to assess the risks of such occurrences and are better placed from a financial perspective to take the hit of hotel/food costs, which to your average passenger could easily be financially crippling.

To remove this burden from airlines and pass them to the passengers would also be essentially saying that corporations have more in the way of rights than people, not a good move by any stretch of the imagination.

The airlines are well aware of the rules and have always been passing on the cost of this risk to the passengers, O'Leary's stunt here is just political grandstanding.

That is not actually true though is it? No one could have predicted the ash problems last year, and few airlines could reasonably afford to incur the massive costs as a result of the episode.

Whilst I think that there should be some element of care offered by the airlines, there needs to be limits to it. I know of families that claimed three times the original cost of their holiday for an extra week in Spain.

Pelican_eats_pigeon

dmg24 wrote: »

That is not actually true though is it? No one could have predicted the ash problems last year, and few airlines could reasonably afford to incur the massive costs as a result of the episode.

All airlines will assess the risk of some kind of catastrophe occurring that causes medium-term grounding, be that terrorism, unexpected flight safety issue affecting a large percentage of their fleet, fuel crisis, ATC strike, war. They will probably have a small department (or more likely outside consultants) exclusively dedicated to assessing the risk of and planning for such circumstances. The consumer in the street does not have such a resource.

With regard to costs, just about every airline worth their salt will have a contingency fund in cash to deal with any such crisis. I believe BA, for example, had £1.7bn set aside. I certainly wouldn't consider booking with any airline that I didn't expect to have such a fund. Again, this is something the average consumer doesn't have.

Munro_Bagger

budgetflyer wrote: »

Yes but this last year has seen a catalogue of events one after the other that have been beyond the control of any airline.Why should they be responsible for actions beyond their control?

Anyway, it is only £2 per passenger, so on a rtn journey its only £1 ew They could easily have hidden it in the fares but M O'L obviously wanted to make a statement.
HOWEVER,now that this levy is introduced, remember, if it disappears, then so have your existing passenger rights!

Sidenote
During the Volcanic Ash Crisis, non EU airlines who flew long haul routes involving a transit stop outwith the EU, abandoned their returning (to EU) passengers in the 4 corners of the globe with no help what so ever.
These airlines have an unfair trading advantage over BA,KLM, Lufthansa etc and although not in direct competition, Ryanair , Easyjet in that they do not need to factor in compensation into their fares as they just dont pay it!

I've just looked at Ryanair flights Stanstead-Memmingen-Stanstead; the EU 261 levy is listed as £8, which is £2 per adult each way. In the past, I've grabbed flights without taxes etc and free online check-in, so this was a surprise to me (I'm not a frequent flyer!!).