Flight delay compensation, all other EU airlines

ukste

Alan_Bowen wrote: »

I fear Blue Air are aware of your limited opportunities to sue. They have no offices or assets in the UK, the charter flights are contracted for tour operators by an air broker close to Gatwick, but they represent many airlines and are not the airline office. It seems Blue Air got close to collapse a few years ago and the actual company operating is now Airline Management Solution SRL, best of luck, I think you will need it

Yes I can see the difficulty here. However, I will press on and see how I get on with it.

agrinnall

I was due to fly from Birmingham to Cork this morning on Aer Lingus EI3701 08:35 - 10:10. The flight was cancelled, as was the earlier incoming flight from Cork EI3700 06:45 - 08:10.

I was transferred to a Dublin flight, and after a lengthy delay at Dublin while they found a bus, as nobody from Birmingham had informed them of the rerouting, 14 of us eventually arrived at Cork airport at 14:50, 4 hours 40 minutes after the arrival time.

There was very bad weather in Cork yesterday which may have prevented the plane getting there so that it could be used for this morning's flight to Birmingham. However, today the weather was OK at both Cork and Birmingham, and I believe these were the only Cork departures and arrivals to be cancelled.

It's something of an academic question as my employer paid for the flight so they would have to make any claim, but I wondered whether you thought this might be a valid one?

JPears

You should have a valid claim. Meteorological conditions on previous flights are not a valid EC. And it is you as the passenger who makes the claim. Whether you keep the compensation or give to your employer is entirely between you and employer. You may have contract terms which oblige you to pay it to them, you may not.

cd10v07

Hi All,

Using the resolver tool, I filed for compensation due to our flight being delayed and cancelled:

• The original flight was to depart at 2.15
• The flight was delayed to 3.45pm and then cancelled around 3pm
• Re-booked onto BE1278 flight which was then cancelled again - scheduled to leave at 4.45pm, cancelled about 4pm
• Advised not to book onto 6.30pm and instead on to 8.05pm that would “definitely be leaving” 8.05pm was subsequently cancelled at about 7.30pm
• Then booked onto a KLM flight at around
• Overall, we incurred a 9 and a half hour delay

This occurred on 4th March when there was some snow in the UK. However, we knew for a fact that other airlines were flying to Manchester and that not enough de-icer was supplied for the planes. This I would consider is not extraordinary weather conditions. Flybe have responded saying that we are not entitled to any compensation saying that under the list of extraordinary circumstances according to the EU legislation, number 14 states “Extreme weather conditions which result in the elevated consumption and exhaustion of what would usually constitute ample de-icing stocks due to third party supply failures - with the result that the aircraft cannot be de-iced for departure.” **. Noting that we were waiting for the arrival of a flight to allow our departure.

Basically I would like to know if there is any point in pursuing this any further, or whether we just don’t have enough grounds and we get nothing for the inconvenience they gave us on our birthday.

Thanks,

Charlotte


**Flybe responded with these words:
Your flight was disrupted as a result of the snow and freezing temperatures at Manchester which is number 14 Meteorological conditions / de icing on the list.


Flybe like most airlines using Manchester, have their aircraft de iced by the airport ground staff who have mobile de icing units that they service aircraft with. On this day, we had to wait for our aircraft to be de iced alongside many others which meant the Air Traffic Control had to reschedule take off and landing slots as flights were not available at the times specified. This combination lead to a back log of flights which could have made airport operations unsafe. The decision was taken to cancel flights to safely free up space for those that were de iced and ready to fly. This meant that flights could not leave to Amsterdam, thus forming flights back such as yours. As this was an ongoing situation, we were unable to confidently predict which flights would leave and at what time. This lead to late notice cancellations and some very challenging conditions for passengers such as yourselves, as well as our disruption team and airport staff who were at the customer facing end of events.

JPears

A basic concept of the regulation is that meteorlogical conditions which only affect the flight concerned could be considered an EC. Yours was a knock on effect, not directly affecting your flight. Indeed the issue was not so much the weather as the inefficiency/negligence of the airport contractors. You will probably need to issue and NBA and take to court if necessary. Read Vauban's guide and proceed.
From your post it would appear that flymaybe were incapable of providing any flights out of 3 potential ones.

Carmen

Hi,
After reading this thread I realised I might be able to make a claim for a cancelled flight (Ryanair) in January due to a ATC strike in France.
I have applied accordingly, but I'm not sure if I did so properly.
Reading again through the guidelines, should I have claimed for the actual cost of the flight? (I was given a free change for the next available flight, three day later) I only claimed for, continuation of car hire, fuel, dart charge, all of which I had receipts for. I did not obtain receipts for the food that we had during this time (did not know I was going to make a claim) but I did put in the claim for what we spent on eating out.
My question is, have I done all I should have or should I start the claim again, if it's possible?
Many thanks for any advice.
Carmen

JPears

You can't claim compensation under reg 261/2004 for cancellation due to ATC as this is something outside of the airline's control in most cases.

Olim

Dear All,
after over 2 years of getting nowhere with following all the advice and stubbornness of aer lingus, i decided to do a no win no fee flight claim for my family of 5 .
I am pleased to say the company Bott and Co got us a settlement .They had to issue court proceedings .

Our claim was for €400 per person, which converted to £352.98 from this they deducted our fees of 27% and a €25 admin fee.

Amount Paid per Passenger £235.62

it was easy to deal with Bott and co very low hassle factor .I was happy to get a percentage of something rather than 100% of nothing.
:T:T:T:T:beer:

cd10v07

JPears wrote: »

A basic concept of the regulation is that meteorlogical conditions which only affect the flight concerned could be considered an EC. Yours was a knock on effect, not directly affecting your flight. Indeed the issue was not so much the weather as the inefficiency/negligence of the airport contractors. You will probably need to issue and NBA and take to court if necessary. Read Vauban's guide and proceed.
From your post it would appear that flymaybe were incapable of providing any flights out of 3 potential ones.

Hi JPears,


Thanks for your response - I did read the guide and so will proceed with your advice - though before i proceed with the NBA - is it worth replying to Flybe explaining that the EC regulations state that the meterological conditions affect your plane and in our case we had no plane so it was the knock on effect as you said?


Thanks again,


Charlotte

JPears

Hi Charlotte - include that in your NBA letter. Your NBA is basically your claim, with as much detail you care to put in, as long as the basics are there, ending with the statement that this is the airlines last chance to pay what they owe you before you submit court papers 2 weeks later. Some airlines wake up to this, others will continue to play you along until they receive the claim from small claims.
It is a "game" of attrition - the airlines will wear down each claimant knowing that some will give up and go away. Its totally unethical, diabolic behaviour. The CAA are aware of this but have decided to do nothing to bring their paymsters to heel. Classic tail wags the dog...