Flight delay and cancellation compensation, Jet2.com ONLY

dino25uk

howticklediam, check out eudelay on twitter on Monday.

Vauban

razorsedge wrote: »

Article 15 of the EU261/2004 regs covers this point:

Article 15
Exclusion of waiver
1. Obligations vis-à-vis passengers pursuant to this Regulation
may not be limited or waived, notably by a derogation
or restrictive clause in the contract of carriage.

I'm not sure this is relevant though.

An aviation contract barrister once explained this to me. I'm not a lawyer, so don't know if it's right or not. But I'll try to relate the point as clearly as he did to me.

He said (this was before the Dawson case) that in his view airlines' attempts to claim the Montreal Convention "trumped" the UK Statute of Limitation would come to nought. But a term in the contract of carriage that stipulated any legal action would need to be brought within two years was much more likely to succeed. This is because the Limitation Act prescribes that the period of limitation for such circumstances should be either six years or whatever term is agreed between the two parties. So if you agree a term of two years for your specific contract of carriage, then that's how much time the law says you have to bring a case (or so the argument goes).

I'd be interested to know from those with more knowledge and talent for law than I have whether this is plausible or not. And whether they're aware of this being tested in a court.

EDIT: Just to be clear, there's nothing in the Regulation to say how long you have to bring a legal case, which is why I don't see this being a restrictive clause. The More judgement clarified this, but said that the period of limitation would be determined by domestic law. Which, for the purposes of this argument, is six years or whatever is agreed between the two parties.

JPears

Does it say anywhere in such "contracts" eg Jet2's that "your statutory rights are not affected" as it has to in the Sale of Goods act?
Whilst technically airlines have a point ( a very limited one in my humble opinion), what if your choose the reject that term and conditions as part your contract?
It is typical of the underhand, verging on deceitful, methods certain airlines have adopted.
Interestingly, Jet2's terms and conditions state:
"Any right to damages and/or compensation and/or any other relief whatsoever in relation to your booking shall be extinguished if an action is not brought within two years of the date of arrival at destination, or the ...."
It does not say legal action. Simply making a claim to the airline surely is an action, by the strict definition of the word?

glentoran99

JPears wrote: »

Does it say anywhere in such "contracts" eg Jet2's that "your statutory rights are not affected" as it has to in the Sale of Goods act?
Whilst technically airlines have a point ( a very limited one in my humble opinion), what if your choose the reject that term and conditions as part your contract?
It is typical of the underhand, verging on deceitful, methods certain airlines have adopted.
Interestingly, Jet2's terms and conditions state:
"Any right to damages and/or compensation and/or any other relief whatsoever in relation to your booking shall be extinguished if an action is not brought within two years of the date of arrival at destination, or the ...."
It does not say legal action. Simply making a claim to the airline surely is an action, by the strict definition of the word?

by booking with them you accept that part though, , If the airlines can change this to two years whats to stop them making it 1 year? 1 month or even 1 day?

dp12

Hi all, new to forum, great info - thx. I just checked all my flight info and we had 256 minute delay on Jet2 flight LS678 coming from Mahon back to East Mids on June 21st, 2014 party of 6, we think it was a fault with the plane and we ended up on a different plane - anyone else claiming on that flight that can remember the actual reason? I am going to start a claim anyway and be patient! D

howticklediam

glentoran99 wrote: »

by booking with them you accept that part though, , If the airlines can change this to two years whats to stop them making it 1 year? 1 month or even 1 day?

One of my arguments is that it is unclear and therefore unfair. I genuinely didn't understand that "bring and action" meant "file court papers". Why would I? I'm not a lawyer.

My other angle is that the Conditions of Contract that are issued with the booking confirmation, i.e. my permanent record of the transaction, does not have that clause, but it says that it is subject to the Montreal Convention. It does refer to the T&Cs on the website, however these change, and the T&Cs today are not the same as the T&Cs when I made the booking. They had to use the Wayback Machine archive to provide me with a copy of the T&Cs. So I would say it's unreasonable to expect me to commit the T&Cs to memory, and I can't go to the website to check them because they are subject to change on the web, so I can only rely on the copy supplied with the booking documentation.

The Montreal Convention has been rejected in the Dawson case by the court of appeal in favour of the Statute of Limitations.

Additionally, the T&Cs they provided to highlight the two year limit are from an archive which does not have the same date stamp as the date I made my booking, but from two months earlier, so there is no guarantee that they were not subsequently changed.

howticklediam

Another thing that has occurred to me pertinent to my claim is that the mechanical fault was actually on the preceding flight. It was an instrument panel fault.

The flight was diverted to another airport, the fault checked and the system reset and the fault cleared. But as the plane was at a different airport they bused us there to get the flight.

So there was not actually a fault on our flight, it had occurred and been fixed on the earlier flight. So the delay was really a knock-on from the earlier flight and as far as we are concerned it's simply a case that there was no plane made available at our airport.

So it comes down to lack of spare capacity, I'm not sure the mechanical fault is relevant at all.

HELDEN

Jet 2 still continue to deny responsibility for our delay of 8 and a half hours(Barcelona to Leeds 18th March 2013)and are now awaiting another European Court decision which they tell me will take 12-18 months. AESA (the Spanish CAA) have already written to me and advised that I should get compensation for our flight delay, but Jet 2 refuse to pay. I have recently (Jan 2015) sent all my details to Bott and Co as suggested by Martin to be reputable and good at this - they will not help. They say that there was bad weather at both airports on the day/night of our flight which having been there, I can absolutely say is not true. What the heck do I do now?? :mad:

howticklediam

HELDEN wrote: »

Jet 2 still continue to deny responsibility for our delay of 8 and a half hours(Barcelona to Leeds 18th March 2013)and are now awaiting another European Court decision which they tell me will take 12-18 months. AESA (the Spanish CAA) have already written to me and advised that I should get compensation for our flight delay, but Jet 2 refuse to pay. I have recently (Jan 2015) sent all my details to Bott and Co as suggested by Martin to be reputable and good at this - they will not help. They say that there was bad weather at both airports on the day/night of our flight which having been there, I can absolutely say is not true. What the heck do I do now?? :mad:

You can go it alone, but you have to be prepared for a lot of research and be sure of your argument, and if Bott aren't prepared to fight it, it's probably because it's not an easy case.

Whatever you do, you'll need to serve papers by 18th March 2015 because Jet2 have a two year limitation clause in their T&Cs and they will just use the time-barred defence if you are outside this time limit. I am up against this defence right now and need to decide whether to fight it.

howticklediam

howticklediam wrote: »

You can go it alone, but you have to be prepared for a lot of research and be sure of your argument, and if Bott aren't prepared to fight it, it's probably because it's not an easy case.

Whatever you do, you'll need to serve papers by 18th March 2015 because Jet2 have a two year limitation clause in their T&Cs and they will just use the time-barred defence if you are outside this time limit. I am up against this defence right now and need to decide whether to fight it.

Another thing to consider is that Jet2 won't properly engage until you serve court papers, then you will get their defence from their solicitor. It's not until then that you know what defence they will use in court, so it's difficult to predict. The fob-off letters you are getting now don't count for much, they might come up with something you haven't thought of.