6 hour delay due to technical fault, Ryanair say no compensation!

blondmark

callum9999 wrote: »

I haven't seen a single logical reason in this post that explains why someone who is delayed by 3 hours and doesn't suffer any financial loss deserves to be given €300.

This reveals your fundamental misunderstanding about the function of the law. Are you seriously saying you cannot grasp that compensatory damages are at the very heart of the operation of every legal system on the planet? Together with punishment, it is the law's primary way of addressing a breach throughout every sphere, both civil and criminal, and quantum need not have any relationship to financial loss.

If you're the victim of someone else's crime, you may have suffered no financial loss. Nevertheless you may be entitled to substantial compensation from the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority.

If a debt collector harasses you to repay your debts, you have suffered no financial loss, but you're entitled to thousands under the Protection From Harassment Act 1997.

If your landlord changes the locks because you haven't paid the rent, you are entitled to compensation under the Housing Act 1988, generally in the high thousands or tens of thousands.

If a hospital starves and dehydrates your loved ones through lack of proper care you may be entitled to hundreds of thousands - even millions of pounds.

Centipede's example of poisonous peanuts giving rise to an entitlement to enormous compensation where no financial loss has occurred is a classic example of how the law needs to operate to force businesses to comply with their obligations.

The list goes on and on, and a citizen's right to compensation is a necessary function of the law.

EU law is compatible with the principle of proportionality. Compensating passengers whose flights have been delayed does not result in an arbitrary and unduly severe financial burden on air carriers, particularly since the frequency of delays of more than three hours, which confer entitlement to compensation, are exceptionally limited.

The Advocate General was persuaded by figures brought to the attention of the European Commission by the European Organisation for the Safety of Air Navigation (Eurocontrol) that in fact fewer than 1.2% of flights potentially fall under the scope of the Regulation’s provisions on delayed flights and fewer than 0.5% are delayed by three hours or more.

The proportion of flights for which delay confers entitlement to compensation, provided for in Article 7 of the Regulation, is actually less than 0.15%. As we all know, many airlines unlawfully refuse to meet any legitimate claims, making that tiny fraction even more minuscule.

Moreover, airlines are not obliged to pay compensation if they can prove that the cancellation or long delay is caused by extraordinary circumstances beyond the carrier’s control.

So please: put your violin away. Nobody, other than the extremist trolls on this forum, is sorry for airlines having to pay this compensation for the inconvenience caused to passengers in exceptionally tiny numbers.

tripled

callum9999 wrote: »

I haven't seen a single logical reason in this post that explains why someone who is delayed by 3 hours and doesn't suffer any financial loss deserves to be given €300.

I choose to enter a contract with a carrier which has certain clauses. For example, one may be that if I cannot present my boarding pass I must pay £60 for it to be reissued, where the cost to the airline is a few pounds. The carrier also chooses to enter that contract by selling me a seat, one of the stipulations being that if the flight is delayed by a certain period then I am entitled to €300.

So someone "deserves" €300 because that is the contract the airline entered into with them. And an airline is generally a lot more clued up about the contracts they enter into than your average consumer.

If you think the EU law is incorrect then lobby your MEP, for the good that will do you.

If you think it's remotely feasible for an airline to pack up shop and leave the continent (especially the likes of Ryanair where 100% of their flights go to/from EU countries) then you are an absolute moron. Of course it's physically possible, but it's no less logical than telling the British poor to "shut up moaning and move to Ethiopia - stuff is cheaper there".

Actually it's more like saying I have a choice of whether or not to travel by airline, just as an airline can choose whether or not to carry passengers (or even operate flights at all) in a given territory. If an airline chooses to withdraw from a market, another will fill its place if they think it is economically viable. Maybe importing cheap goods from Etheopia could be Ryanair's new business model?

callum9999

blondmark wrote: »

This reveals your fundamental misunderstanding about the function of the law. Are you seriously saying you cannot grasp that compensatory damages are at the very heart of the operation of every legal system on the planet? Together with punishment, it is the law's primary way of addressing a breach throughout every sphere, both civil and criminal, and quantum need not have any relationship to financial loss.

If you're the victim of someone else's crime, you may have suffered no financial loss. Nevertheless you may be entitled to substantial compensation from the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority.

If a debt collector harasses you to repay your debts, you have suffered no financial loss, but you're entitled to thousands under the Protection From Harassment Act 1997.

If your landlord changes the locks because you haven't paid the rent, you are entitled to compensation under the Housing Act 1988, generally in the high thousands or tens of thousands.

If a hospital starves and dehydrates your loved ones through lack of proper care you may be entitled to hundreds of thousands - even millions of pounds.

Centipede's example of poisonous peanuts giving rise to an entitlement to enormous compensation where no financial loss has occurred is a classic example of how the law needs to operate to force businesses to comply with their obligations.

The list goes on and on, and a citizen's right to compensation is a necessary function of the law.

EU law is compatible with the principle of proportionality. Compensating passengers whose flights have been delayed does not result in an arbitrary and unduly severe financial burden on air carriers, particularly since the frequency of delays of more than three hours, which confer entitlement to compensation, are exceptionally limited.

The Advocate General was persuaded by figures brought to the attention of the European Commission by the European Organisation for the Safety of Air Navigation (Eurocontrol) that in fact fewer than 1.2% of flights potentially fall under the scope of the Regulation’s provisions on delayed flights and fewer than 0.5% are delayed by three hours or more.

The proportion of flights for which delay confers entitlement to compensation, provided for in Article 7 of the Regulation, is actually less than 0.15%. As we all know, many airlines unlawfully refuse to meet any legitimate claims, making that tiny fraction even more minuscule.

Moreover, airlines are not obliged to pay compensation if they can prove that the cancellation or long delay is caused by extraordinary circumstances beyond the carrier’s control.

So please: put your violin away. Nobody, other than the extremist trolls on this forum, is sorry for airlines having to pay this compensation for the inconvenience caused to passengers in exceptionally tiny numbers.

I am clearly not going to read all this... Why on earth do so many people insist on writing such ridiculously long-winded posts? I'm well aware what "the function of the law" is, and it is not there to quantify compensation for every eventuality. If you believe that your flight being delayed by 3 hours is so distressing that you need to be paid €300 in cash to make up for it, I am not going to bother talking about it with you - I think it's utterly, utterly ridiculous.

callum9999

tripled wrote: »

I choose to enter a contract with a carrier which has certain clauses. For example, one may be that if I cannot present my boarding pass I must pay £60 for it to be reissued, where the cost to the airline is a few pounds. The carrier also chooses to enter that contract by selling me a seat, one of the stipulations being that if the flight is delayed by a certain period then I am entitled to €300.

So someone "deserves" €300 because that is the contract the airline entered into with them. And an airline is generally a lot more clued up about the contracts they enter into than your average consumer.

If you think the EU law is incorrect then lobby your MEP, for the good that will do you.


Actually it's more like saying I have a choice of whether or not to travel by airline, just as an airline can choose whether or not to carry passengers (or even operate flights at all) in a given territory. If an airline chooses to withdraw from a market, another will fill its place if they think it is economically viable. Maybe importing cheap goods from Etheopia could be Ryanair's new business model?

Give it a rest. There is an enormous difference between one party of the contract deciding to put a charge in and a government deciding to put a charge in. NO airline has ever, or will ever, voluntarily put a clause in promising to pay out such high levels of compensation for delays. And you deciding whether you want to fly with Easyjet or Ryanair is not remotely comparable to an airline deciding to relocate it's 300+ aircraft and god-knows how many routes to a completely different continent.

While I fully understand why people like the legislation, I simply cannot grasp why so many feel that it's reasonable. No doubt a result of the compensation/suing culture we now live in. Logically of course the same should apply to train and coach companies - I'm looking forward to it being extended to them so I can rake in thousands of pounds in compensation (despite spending far less than that on tickets) in the future.

If you're just going to repeat the same old "it's in the contract, if the airlines don't like it they can just leave the continent" mantra then don't bother replying - I certainly won't be...

tripled

callum9999 wrote: »

Give it a rest. There is an enormous difference between one party of the contract deciding to put a charge in and a government deciding to put a charge in.

I wouldn't voluntarily add in a clause offering to pay £60 if I forgot my boarding pass. Those are terms imposed by the airline as a condition of the ticket. The delay compensation is a term imposed on behalf of the passenger as a condition of the ticket. Of course there's a difference but that doesn't make it any less valid.

NO airline has ever, or will ever, voluntarily put a clause in promising to pay out such high levels of compensation for delays. And you deciding whether you want to fly with Easyjet or Ryanair is not remotely comparable to an airline deciding to relocate it's 300+ aircraft and god-knows how many routes to a completely different continent.

I never said they should move to a different continent. They have to adjust their business model, close down and return cash to shareholders, or potentially go into administration or bankruptcy.

While I fully understand why people like the legislation, I simply cannot grasp why so many feel that it's reasonable. No doubt a result of the compensation/suing culture we now live in. Logically of course the same should apply to train and coach companies - I'm looking forward to it being extended to them so I can rake in thousands of pounds in compensation (despite spending far less than that on tickets) in the future.

I for one never made any comment on whether I beleive the legislation is reasonable. Personally I believe 300 euros would be excessive in most cases. However I suspect most airlines would be much happier with this than having to refund all monies payed for flights delayed by sixty minutes or more, as a significantly higher proportion of flights would be caught in this net, along with the associated costs of processing these claims.

If you're just going to repeat the same old "it's in the contract, if the airlines don't like it they can just leave the continent" mantra then don't bother replying - I certainly won't be..

Oh no! Never mind. I'll try and survive, even without any compensation to overcome my dissapointment at your lack of response.

blondmark

callum9999 wrote: »

I am clearly not going to read all this...

Is that your version of sticking your fingers in your ears and singing "la la la la" very loudly?

When your views are so extreme and out of touch, responses need to bring you back to basics (e.g. the function of the law, incentives to comply, deterrents for non-compliance, compensatory damages for the inconvenience caused by being stranded / missing ongoing flight and hotel bookings, the rarity of flight compensation, etc.). In other words the accepted norms in a civilised society.

Sorry if lots of words of more than one syllable are a bit challenging for you.

blondmark

callum9999 wrote: »

They obviously didn't genuinely mean it, but it's what they wrote... I didn't just randomly bring up Guantanamo for no apparent reason!

Nobody has likened a delay to Guantanamo - try actually reading posts before commenting on them.

richardw

Why was EU Regulation EC261/2004 introduced into EU law callum9999?

Toe-Jam

Anyone know how long they drag it out after you get the golden ticket? (which arrives by word document in an email)

Also note the suspicious omission of the amount that they are passing to the finance department.

blondmark

Toe-Jam wrote: »

Anyone know how long they drag it out after you get the golden ticket? (which arrives by word document in an email)

Also note the suspicious omission of the amount that they are passing to the finance department.

Ah! I got one just like that once (no figures mentioned in the letter) ... Not only did it turn out eventually to be something like 50p and a mars bar, Ryanair "forgot" to send anything at all, so back to square one!

Honestly, just sue them - it's the only language they understand.