Compensation for delayed flights Discussion Area

Westin

Joanna - replies in your other thread

zippy08

My FRA-LHR flight was cancelled after boarding due to two successive (and separate) equipment failures. I was re-booked on a flight 27 hours later, which I eventually took, because I could get on with my work meanwhile, despite the inconvenience.

I raised a claim with the airline (LH), and today they've sent me an email offering 250 Euros as compensation. I don't want compensation for accommodation/food as I didn't pay for those. What I'm curious about is how they arrived at this €250 figure, i.e. the basis for calculation - is it a case of dangling it to see if the passenger accepts and goes away, like an opening gambit?
Their email calls it a "pragmatic solution".

Westin

zippy08 said:

My FRA-LHR flight was cancelled after boarding due to two successive (and separate) equipment failures. I was re-booked on a flight 27 hours later, which I eventually took, because I could get on with my work meanwhile, despite the inconvenience.

I raised a claim with the airline (LH), and today they've sent me an email offering 250 Euros as compensation. I don't want compensation for accommodation/food as I didn't pay for those. What I'm curious about is how they arrived at this €250 figure, i.e. the basis for calculation - is it a case of dangling it to see if the passenger accepts and goes away, like an opening gambit?
Their email calls it a "pragmatic solution".

Sound right.

Under EU261 if your flight covers a distance of under 1,500km (930 miles), you’re entitled to 250 Euro compensation if you’re delayed by at least two hours and circumstances demand the airline compensates (technical delay).

zippy08

Westin said:

zippy08 said:

My FRA-LHR flight was cancelled after boarding due to two successive (and separate) equipment failures. I was re-booked on a flight 27 hours later, which I eventually took, because I could get on with my work meanwhile, despite the inconvenience.

I raised a claim with the airline (LH), and today they've sent me an email offering 250 Euros as compensation. I don't want compensation for accommodation/food as I didn't pay for those. What I'm curious about is how they arrived at this €250 figure, i.e. the basis for calculation - is it a case of dangling it to see if the passenger accepts and goes away, like an opening gambit?
Their email calls it a "pragmatic solution".

Sound right.

Under EU261 if your flight covers a distance of under 1,500km (930 miles), you’re entitled to 250 Euro compensation if you’re delayed by at least two hours and circumstances demand the airline compensates (technical delay).

Thank you.
Will look it up, but there is a huge difference between a two-hour delay and a 27-hour delay, so I wondered if there is any stepped scale.

Alan_Bowen

No there is no scale regarding the length of delay, only the distance of travel and ex EU it is fixed at 250 Euros, from the UK at £220. I understand you do not want to claim expenses, in which case the offer is all you are entitled to. 

zippy08

Alan_Bowen said:

No there is no scale regarding the length of delay, only the distance of travel and ex EU it is fixed at 250 Euros, from the UK at £220. I understand you do not want to claim expenses, in which case the offer is all you are entitled to. 

Thanks for confirming!

ZouZouPri

zippy08 said:

My FRA-LHR flight was cancelled after boarding due to two successive (and separate) equipment failures. I was re-booked on a flight 27 hours later, which I eventually took, because I could get on with my work meanwhile, despite the inconvenience.

I raised a claim with the airline (LH), and today they've sent me an email offering 250 Euros as compensation. I don't want compensation for accommodation/food as I didn't pay for those. What I'm curious about is how they arrived at this €250 figure, i.e. the basis for calculation - is it a case of dangling it to see if the passenger accepts and goes away, like an opening gambit?
Their email calls it a "pragmatic solution".

May I ask how long between raising your claim and getting your response, please? I put in a claim on 2 July for a delayed MUC-DUB flight with LH and still awaiting response.

hennycare

hennycare said:

NotoriousREV said:

Back in April our Ryanair flight from Manchester to Rhodes was delayed, landing 3 hours and 50 minutes late. The reason was that the baggage handling agent appointed by Ryanair (Swissair) were understaffed and pretty much every flight out of Manchester that day (01/04) was late. These problems had been going on for days, if not weeks, and had been well documented in the press. 

When we claimed compensation, Ryanair told us that the delay was both unexpected and out of their control. My view is that 1) Ryanair are responsible for baggage handling, even if they outsource this responsibility to a 3rd party and 2) the delays were entirely expected given the ongoing staffing issues. 

My questions are: am I right? And, has anyone successfully claimed via the ADR process for a delay due to a lack of baggage handlers?

Thanks. 

I flew out from Manchester last week (01/06) and landed in Dublin (flight time ~30min) just over 3 hours late. On flights scheduled between 5pm and last flight only 2 departed over 3 hours late (some other airlines had cancelled flights), both were ryanair, one was the one I was on.
After a little bit of back and forth with Ryanair and them giving the same excuses to me as they did you (" handling delays" "delay was unexpected" "beyond Ryanair's control") which I would guess is their template response, I have opened a case with ADR. Yes it is petty for a £20 flight, but Ryanair squeeze passengers for every last penny they can, and the treatment I had from Aer Lingus on the return flight (I missed my flight, but that's another story) just put in perspective how terrible a company Ryanair is to their passengers/customers.
The guy I spoke to from Aer Lingus said they have a hybrid set of ground crew, for their jets they are direct employment and the prop fleet are contract, so they haven't been without issues but have largely got it in hand. He said many have gone to work for supermarkets in the pandemic as they got better pay and conditions, and then why would they come back?

Given that the Average departure delay on the evening I flew out for Ryanair was 110mins and for other airlines 45mins it seems like this is an issue plaguing Ryanair more than other Airlines.

I work in construction, client side, and if we have a contract with a contractor and they subcontract some of that work it is still the responsibility of that main contractor who we have employed to deliver the end result. I may be wrong but I would analogise that with Airlines, my contract is for you to get me from A to B within 3 hours of stated time, if you fail and there aren't exceptional issues outside your reasonable control then you've breached the contract and as set out compensation. You hiring a poor subcontractor is your decision and you can take damages up with them but it does not impact on the contract we have together. Obviously ADR is a way to debate whether they did all they could have, but given there was another Ryanair Dublin flight which was scheduled later and left before my own, this seems unlikely to be able to be justified in my opinion.

I would also be interested to know if others have had success or not in these types of claims. I will update when mine is resolved as I expect these issues will progress well into the summer.

An update if it helps anyone in a similar situation.
I appealed my case through ADR, which they accepted and on the last day available to them I received Ryanair's response. It is a significant document with a lot of legal speak. Effectively their argument is that the delay to the arrival and baggage handling caused the delay and these are out of their control.
Given they knew the inbound flight would be >2 hours late no mitigation was made. On the schedule of the aircrafts movements for its' previous flight its' Stated time of Arrival into Manchester (the airport I was flying from) was 10 minutes after my Stated time of Departure. Nowhere in their defence did they state that they changed the schedule to try and mitigate. (Or even say what they tried, just that it's hard keeping flights on time)

Furthermore:
They also got the time wrong, stating it as UTC, rather than UTC+1 (or changed time) due to being in summer time.
They include a bunch of stuff about caselaw relating to bird strikes being extraordinary events, without stating that was a reason for the delay anywhere, and using it as justification for extraordinary events.
I cataloguing my response I found other case law
- showing that the burden of proof is on the Airline to show that the delay "could not have been avoided even if all reasonable measures had been taken",  "That air carrier must establish that, even if it had deployed all its resources in terms of staff or equipment and the financial means at its disposal, it would clearly not have been able, unless it had made intolerable sacrifices"(Case C-315/15 Point 28, 29, & 30)
- that unexpected events should be expected because things do go wrong at times and this should be expected once in a while. The case relates to a fuel pump, the rationale being that "in the course of the activities of an air carrier, that unexpected event is

inherent in the normal exercise of an air carrier’s activity, as air carriers are confronted as a matter of course with unexpected technical problems" (Case C-257/14 Point 42). This explicitly is an unexpected event if there is a recall on parts which are in serve though.  

-Furthermore within the legal precedent the airline can claim from 3rd parties for costs relating to delays, therefore I find it odd that they are fighting this if they should be able to claim from their baggage handlers (Article 13 of the regulation).

I have filled in my comments refuting their defence and now I wait up to 90 days for the final Determination. I would be interested from others their experience of how long it took for the ADR to return a decision.

tasticz

Hi All, 

Would a delay to flight operated by Qatar Airways, starting from Kathmandu (Nepal) --- Doha (Qatar) --- Heathrow (London) qualify for compensation?

Thanks

Westin

tasticz said:

Hi All, 

Would a delay to flight operated by Qatar Airways, starting from Kathmandu (Nepal) --- Doha (Qatar) --- Heathrow (London) qualify for compensation?

Thanks

No, at least not EU261/UK261.

I somehow doubt Nepal or Qatar have much in the way of passenger rights during delays.