Compensation for delayed flights Discussion Area

samsharp99

Just wanted to post about my experiences with Swiss. I regularly fly to Switzerland for work but have now had my flights delayed/cancelled twice - the second time they didn't even bother to tell me! Both times it was the airlines fault (technical or operational reasons).

Their customer service was incredibly slow to respond and it took a lot of back & forth to even get them to offer an £80 voucher.

The first time I was forced to go to Sop for resolution and overall I think it took over 6 months for my claim to be resolved. It has now been 2 months since the second delay and I've only had one email from them.

Just wanted to say that their customer service is crap and I think their internal policy is just to refer all claims to Sop for maximum irritation and delay to the customer.

JPears

legal_magpie wrote: »

Actually, as you didn't pay for the flights in the first place, it could be argued that your employers didn't have to reimburse you at all as the contract was between them and the airline, so even if you are losing tax you're doing all right especially if you also got paid for the day you missed.

I don#'t agree. The regulation states quite clearly that any compensation, duty of care etc is to the passeneger. No mention is made of whoever paid for the flight.
The OP does not state if the 24 hour delay impacted on either their personal time or work time. Even if the latter, that is an unfortunate consequence and part of the job for which they are employed.
The compensation payable is certainly not taxable since it is not income. Otherwise we would all be paying tax on comepnsation we received under reg 261/2004.

NoviceAngel

Bulbasaur wrote: »

I’m after advice once the compensation has been received.

Simply, our flight was cancelled last year and BA paid the set amount for our whole party. All good on that front. The compensation money came into our employers (nameless) and they did not pass it all on. Instead they took some money off to cover employers tax and NI and then paid us through payroll. We then incurred further losses through PAYE, NI, pension etc.

So my question is, should this have been processed through payroll at all? Should we have the various monies taken off or should the whole amount have been paid separately?

If this could be better answered elsewhere then please guide me as to where I should post this.

It’s an interesting case, and I do recall reading a similar one a few years ago where the employer wrongly kept the flight delay compensation arguing that they had purchased the tickets for their employees.

If you park any moral questions arising to one side. Then the compensation is not taxable so you should not have been taxed on it. I work for myself and I did look into this some years ago when I received compensation under EC261 and didn’t know whether to declare the compensation as income. I’m not a tax expert but if you google it, this seems to be the consensus.

You could have course go via your union as previously suggested, but I personally would call payroll and have a friendly chat and simply say ask the question, ‘as compensation under EC261/2004 is not taxable, can you please explain why you’ve deducted tax on it’ ? I’m sure you’ll find that your employer didn’t have a clue what to do and have taxed you in error.

Edit - sorry for any repetition- JP’s up early !

NoviceAngel

samsharp99 wrote: »

Just wanted to post about my experiences with Swiss. I regularly fly to Switzerland for work but have now had my flights delayed/cancelled twice - the second time they didn't even bother to tell me! Both times it was the airlines fault (technical or operational reasons).

Their customer service was incredibly slow to respond and it took a lot of back & forth to even get them to offer an £80 voucher.

The first time I was forced to go to Sop for resolution and overall I think it took over 6 months for my claim to be resolved. It has now been 2 months since the second delay and I've only had one email from them.

Just wanted to say that their customer service is crap and I think their internal policy is just to refer all claims to Sop for maximum irritation and delay to the customer.

Sadly I don’t know of any airline that has a good customer service aftercare.

You mentioned an £80 voucher ? This is not an amount that looks like compensation under EC261 have a read of Vaubans guide. You might just find that your entitled to much more.

legal_magpie

NoviceAngel wrote: »

If you park any moral questions arising to one side. Then the compensation is not taxable.

You could have course go via your union as previously suggested, but I personally would call payroll and have a friendly chat and simply say ask the question, ‘as compensation under EC261/2004 is not taxable, can you please explain why you’ve deducted tax on it’ ? I’m sure you’ll find that your employer didn’t have a clue what to do and have taxed you in error.

Edit - sorry for any repetition- JP’s up early !

I agree that the money is certainly not taxable as it isn't "income" and I suspect that the Angel is right in that the employer didn't know how to treat it. I would certainly go along with his suggestion to take it up with them but (and this may be a moral issue) if you were paid for the day you were stranded you are, in effect getting double recovery.

NoviceAngel

legal_magpie wrote: »

..... I would certainly go along with his suggestion to take it up with them but (and this may be a moral issue) if you were paid for the day you were stranded you are, in effect getting double recovery.

Yeah but the Angel has no morals whatsoever!


ps that was a joke ! I have some as long as the airline isn’t J2 !

Bulbasaur

Thank you all for your help and advice.

To reply to a earlier comment, we weren’t docked any pay and nor would we. We were still working by looking after all the students for longer and having huge stress trying to find overnight accommodation for 50 people along with all the other passengers. I have no moral qualms whatsoever that this isn’t due to us. There was no impact on the school/business and its merely about retaining all of the compensation BA paid to the affected passengers.

Wish we’d all claimed directly rather than as a group as it would have avoided this.

Anyway thanks once more and I’ll be quoting some of your sentences in my reply.

jpsartre

If your travels were paid by your employer and you remained "on the clock" during the delay it seems fair enough to me that any compensation would go to the employer as well. They are effectively the inconvenienced part.

Bulbasaur

Perhaps I’m not made myself clear enough as this isn’t a normal business, however it really doesn’t matter. For the record this was a school trip abroad and our flight home was cancelled. We had to continue to supervise 40 teenagers for the whole time, hours of delay in the airport, traipsing across a capital city at midnight to the accommodation we found, as no support from airline, paying for costs out of our own pocket to look after the kids for about 24 hours. We worked damn hard under stressful conditions but have sought no payment from the school for this, as it’s one of those things we do.

The school was not inconvenienced in any way, they incurred no financial losses at all hence my colleagues and I willingness to retain the airlines compensation payment to us. Not a partial payment as they seek to take some, just the amount, like all the other stakeholders got.

Justice13075

So you were teachers with a party of 40 teenagers. Not only should you have had the full compensation but the teenagers should have each had the compensation. If I were a parent I would be contacting the school asking for the compensation. As JPears says, the regulation states quite clearly that any compensation, duty of care etc is to the passeneger. No mention is made of whoever paid for the flight.