Flight delay and cancellation compensation, KLM/AF ONLY

Alan_Bowen

As this is a UK based site, we tend to offer advice to UK citizens, who themselves can be confused by differing limitation periods between England and Scotland. A quick Google search suggests the limitation period in both Belgium and the Netherlands is 5 years in a contract claim and the only way that could be varied would be if the specific legislation implementing EU261 in those countries, in the UK we did not need any further law but not sure about other countries, had a shorter term for making claims. It is clear English law is not relevant here but unless we have Belgian readers, we may not be able to offer you an answer. You could ask KLM to give you the specific law limiting the claim and then check yourself.

JPears

housekeeping bump

JPears

Bumped for new peeps

Marie-D

We recently travelled to New York on a trip booked through Expedia. On our return journey, we boarded the aircraft and due to a technical difficulty (faulty seat in Business Class), were delayed on the departure - Air France flight AF7. This consequently meant we missed our connecting flight from Paris to Birmingham (AF5018).


I completed the Air France online form and was originally told we weren't due anything because it was delayed 'due to restrictions put forward by airport'.

After going back to them to say this was not the reason the flight was delayed they said there was a miscommunication in their previous correspondence. They then said that although we suffered a delay of over 4 hours at our destination, the second leg of our journey was operated by Flybe and the operating carrier of the flights should be the same in order to receive any compensation. We were, however, travelling on a single ticket for the journey, not separate ones.

Could you please advise me on this?


Thank you :mad:

JPears

1. Was the second leg of your journey on a Flybe plane, a regualar Flybe route?
2. How long were you delayed in arriving at Paris?

Marie-D

It should have been on AF5018 operated by FLYBE. We missed that and were put on a later flight, also operated by FLYBE.
We were delayed 5 hrs 40 minutes at arriving in Birmingham. I'm unsure of the delay to Paris, but according to Air France it was 57 minutes

JPears

Then unfortunately you are not due any compensation under reg 261/2004 since codeshares between airlines don't constitute a single journey/ticket and your first leg wasn't delayed long enough.
It is an area of 261/2004 the EU really need to address.

Marie-D

I would have expected that the fact that Air France 'sub-contracted' the flight out, that it should not make a difference to the customer

JPears

No, they don't subcontract out. Codeshare is where certain airlines have an agreement to link journey legs to increase passeneger convenience on routes. As far as reg 261/2004 goes, the actual airline flying the route is responsible, not the airline or company you booked through, unfortunately.
Skyscanner does show that your possible flights involve Flybe or Delta
It would appear that Expedia doesn't, which is a bit naughty....

Matt15

Hi all,

My wife and I have just returned from a holiday in South America. I had spent ages researching different flight options to suit our schedule. I eventually found a seemingly good option with Air France which involved flying out with Air France and back with Alitalia. We paid extra for this option as it would get us back home before midday on the Sunday therefore giving my wife time to recover before having to go to work the next day.

However, twelve days before we were due to leave they informed us that one leg of the return with Alitalia had been cancelled so they switched us to KLM flights. This however significantly added to our travel time and meant we landed at 10.30pm, 11 hours after the landing time we had booked for! I tried to argue that they should upgrade our tickets due to the inconvenience so that at least my wife could have a comfortable flight and maybe it wouldn't be such an ordeal to go to work the next morning but they were completely uninterested. They offered to cancel the trip and refund our money but we had already booked activities, hotels and onward travel so this obviously wasn't an option for us. Needless to say my wife really struggled all week at work and I'm concerned about the effects on her health as well as her performance at work.

Are we entitled to any compensation due to our flight coming in 11 hours later than what we had expected when making the booking and had specifically paid extra for as there were cheaper options with other airlines?

Any advice would be much appreciated.

Thanks in advance.