Flight changes - what are my rights?

Walt

Apologies if questions like this are asked often on this forum. I'm not a regular user and if the moderators want to move it then no complaints from me.

My girlfriend and I have flights booked to Burma, leaving just after Christmas. We booked the flights via lastminute.com and are flying Manchester > London > Guangzhou > Yangon.

Yesterday (by chance through doing some research for our trip rather than contact from lastminute) I discovered that the time of our flight between London and Guangzhou has been moved back by around 6 hours. This means that we will now miss our connecting flight to Yangon. We now will not arrive in Yangon until a day after we had planned and will have to spend a night in Guangzhou.

I spoke to lastminute yesterday and told them that we needed to be in Yangon on the day that we had originally booked for (we have an itinerary, hotel, and transport bookings in Burma that rely on this). They told me that they would call back either today or tomorrow to discuss what our new flights would be.

But in advance of that call I was just wondering if anyone could tell me what my rights are on this:
- can we demand an alternative route and/or airline that gets us there at approximately the same time as we had originally planned?
- can we demand that lastminute compensate us for the cost of a hotel in Guangzhou?
- if the first flight we take (i.e. originally Manchester to London) leaves early in the morning, can we demand compensation to cover the cost of a hotel near the airport (we live in Glasgow and had originally planned to leave there in the morning for a 2pm flight from Manchester)?
- if we really have to arrive the following day (18-19 hours later than originally planned) can we demand compensation for the loss of our holiday time?

I've been lucky enough with travel in the past to never have had anything like this happen, so any advice that anyone could give me would be greatly appreciated.

jpsartre

Assuming this is the result of a schedule change, there are no *obvious* rights afforded by EU261 so in the worst case, the answer to all your questions is no. That said, airlines are usually happy to re-route in these situations if you can find an alternative routing with them (or perhaps a partner airline). I would start looking myself to see what the options are and then suggest one to Lastminute.

If you could argue that your situation should be treated as a delay, the answer to question 2 would change to yes (or rather, the airline would have to arrange for overnight accommodation for you). If you could argue that the schedule changed flight is effectively cancelled, you would then have a legal entitlement to re-routing. Whether that could be argued really depends on the specifics of your case. You might want to post flight numbers in order to get better answers. No matter what is the case, you will have no right to a hotel on the night before you departure or right to compensation for loss of holiday time.

Obviously_the_best

You are entitled to a re-route that is satisfactory to you, or a full refund. Nothing more.

jpsartre

Obviously_the_best wrote: »

You are entitled to a re-route that is satisfactory to you, or a full refund.

Not necessarily. As noted, EU261 does not explicitly address schedule changes so it is unclear exactly what the rights are in these cases but if you think the case falls under delays there are no rights to be re-routed. Of course, some airlines may choose to provide that right themselves.

It is also not necessarily true that there are no other rights but again, it depends on how a schedule change should be categorized.

jpsartre

Passengers have no rights to re-routing when their flights are delayed, only when their flights are cancelled. While the Sturgeon ruling says that a delayed flight may be treated as cancelled when the delay exceeds 3 hours, it is also explicitly stated that this is "for the purposes of the application of the right to compensation". Is it possible that future rulings may extend this to cover rights to re-routing as well? Perhaps, though that remains to be seen.