Compensation for delayed flights Discussion Area

ronpickering

Thanks so much for your help, will keep everyone posted 

sugar_daddy1237

Hi
Not sure if this is the correct place to ask this question. 

We went on holiday to Pakistan for a wedding. We were due to return on the Tuesday but on the Friday before, my mother in law passed away. I got in touch with the agent who booked our tickets and asked for the tickets to be extended for 10 days. They said ok but it would cost £220 extra per person, option to pay once i returnedback to the uk which i agreed. So I agreed because of the horrendous situation with the sudden death. On my return I payed the agency the money I owed them but I got an email from the airline to feedback general thoughts about the flight and service. I told them about the extra cost I had to pay. They advised that if I can give documents such as death certificate and my relationship to my mother in law, I could get a refund. Ive done this but the agency are dragging their feet. What are the chances a refund in this situation? Others who travelled at the same time via direct booking and other agencies got a free extended ticket but with a different airline. 

Thanks 

eskbanker

sugar_daddy1237 said:

Hi
Not sure if this is the correct place to ask this question. 

We went on holiday to Pakistan for a wedding. We were due to return on the Tuesday but on the Friday before, my mother in law passed away. I got in touch with the agent who booked our tickets and asked for the tickets to be extended for 10 days. They said ok but it would cost £220 extra per person, option to pay once i returnedback to the uk which i agreed. So I agreed because of the horrendous situation with the sudden death. On my return I payed the agency the money I owed them but I got an email from the airline to feedback general thoughts about the flight and service. I told them about the extra cost I had to pay. They advised that if I can give documents such as death certificate and my relationship to my mother in law, I could get a refund. Ive done this but the agency are dragging their feet. What are the chances a refund in this situation? Others who travelled at the same time via direct booking and other agencies got a free extended ticket but with a different airline. 

Thanks 

Probably not really the correct place as your query doesn't have any connection with flight delay compensation, but you'd need to study the Ts & Cs and any published policies of both the agency and the airline (you'll be bound by both) to ascertain what you're entitled to in such circumstances, as there isn't some sort of industry standard.

Westin

Keep in mind that you asked the agent to do extra work for you and as @eskbanker mentions, there will also be the agency T&C’s on ticket purchases to factor.   

Lux_K

Hi hope someone can help, I recently booked a flight from Edinburgh to Stockholm with Norwegian Airlines. The original flight got cancelled 2.5hrs before departure and I was then put on a flight via Oslo to Stockholm with an overnight stay so I definitely arrived 3hrs later than originally planned. Norwegian have rejected my claim for compensation as they have cited exceptional circumstances- bad weather disrupting flights earlier in the day which then caused my flight to be cancelled. Can anyone confirm if this correct that I’m not due compensation despite the bad weather not actually affecting my flight? Thanks 

eskbanker

Lux_K said:

Hi hope someone can help, I recently booked a flight from Edinburgh to Stockholm with Norwegian Airlines. The original flight got cancelled 2.5hrs before departure and I was then put on a flight via Oslo to Stockholm with an overnight stay so I definitely arrived 3hrs later than originally planned. Norwegian have rejected my claim for compensation as they have cited exceptional circumstances- bad weather disrupting flights earlier in the day which then caused my flight to be cancelled. Can anyone confirm if this correct that I’m not due compensation despite the bad weather not actually affecting my flight? Thanks 

There isn't much data in the public domain but if you share more details, e.g. date, then there are some well-informed insiders who may be able to offer comment about conditions and circumstances that day, but in general, the extraordinary circumstances exemption can indeed apply when the root cause of a cancellation is severe weather, even if earlier in the day - it may be, for example, that delays earlier in the day meant that the crew wouldn't have had enough hours left to complete the day's flying, and standby crews were all allocated, so some flights get cancelled.

mikeyboy32

I had a flight cancelled whilst queing at the bag drop in Rhodes flying back to Manchester. I got given an overnight stay and given a flight the next day so got home a day later than expected. 
I have put in a compensation claim and have got a reply stating that I am not due compensation due to there was no air traffic available to fly and the time limit that cabin crew could work had gone over the legal limit so we could not fly. I have been offered £190 instead.
Is this worth taking further regarding the compensation for two passengers?
Many thanks in advance 

eskbanker

mikeyboy32 said:

I had a flight cancelled whilst queing at the bag drop in Rhodes flying back to Manchester. I got given an overnight stay and given a flight the next day so got home a day later than expected. 
I have put in a compensation claim and have got a reply stating that I am not due compensation due to there was no air traffic available to fly and the time limit that cabin crew could work had gone over the legal limit so we could not fly. I have been offered £190 instead.
Is this worth taking further regarding the compensation for two passengers?
Many thanks in advance 

An airline isn't obliged to pay compensation "if it can prove that the cancellation is caused by extraordinary circumstances which could not have been avoided even if all reasonable measures had been taken", and delays caused by air traffic control restrictions are often cited successfully as such extraordinary circumstances - recital 15 of the regulations does specify:

Extraordinary circumstances should be deemed to exist where the impact of an air traffic management decision in relation to a particular aircraft on a particular day gives rise to a long delay, an overnight delay, or the cancellation of one or more flights by that aircraft, even though all reasonable measures had been taken by the air carrier concerned to avoid the delays or cancellations.

Crew going out of hours would just be a symptom of this rather than a cause as such, but does the response give any further explanation?

On what basis is £190 offered?

In terms of taking things further, you'd need to be making a case that the airline's explanation is wrong, so what would you rely on for that?  Your options will depend on which airline it is, as some subscribe to ADR services, whereas for others you'd need to approach the CAA PACT team, or ultimately small claims would be an available route if you were confident enough about your chances.

mikeyboy32

eskbanker said:

mikeyboy32 said:

I had a flight cancelled whilst queing at the bag drop in Rhodes flying back to Manchester. I got given an overnight stay and given a flight the next day so got home a day later than expected. 
I have put in a compensation claim and have got a reply stating that I am not due compensation due to there was no air traffic available to fly and the time limit that cabin crew could work had gone over the legal limit so we could not fly. I have been offered £190 instead.
Is this worth taking further regarding the compensation for two passengers?
Many thanks in advance 

An airline isn't obliged to pay compensation "if it can prove that the cancellation is caused by extraordinary circumstances which could not have been avoided even if all reasonable measures had been taken", and delays caused by air traffic control restrictions are often cited successfully as such extraordinary circumstances - recital 15 of the regulations does specify:

Extraordinary circumstances should be deemed to exist where the impact of an air traffic management decision in relation to a particular aircraft on a particular day gives rise to a long delay, an overnight delay, or the cancellation of one or more flights by that aircraft, even though all reasonable measures had been taken by the air carrier concerned to avoid the delays or cancellations.

Crew going out of hours would just be a symptom of this rather than a cause as such, but does the response give any further explanation?

On what basis is £190 offered?

In terms of taking things further, you'd need to be making a case that the airline's explanation is wrong, so what would you rely on for that?  Your options will depend on which airline it is, as some subscribe to ADR services, whereas for others you'd need to approach the CAA PACT team, or ultimately small claims would be an available route if you were confident enough about your chances.

Thanks for the reply really appreciate it. The airline is easyjet. Nothing else mentioned on my email apart from the reason why it happened as mentioned on my original post. Tbh I'm thinking that I would not be offered anything else on the limited knowledge I have as this is my first and only claim but thought it would be good to get additional info from people more knowledgeable in this.

The £190 was offered for the inconvenience caused.

Thanks again.

ronpickering

eskbanker said:

ronpickering said:

Hi and thanks for the response, the expenses are for the hotel we had to pay for, meals, drink and transport.  I filed for compensation based on the advice on the MSE page which says you could be eligible for compensation if you're flight is delayed longer than 4 hours and the delay is not due to ATC issues or weather etc.

Would be interested to know if you or anyone else thinks it's worth escalating to ADR based on the reasons given for the cancellation and extended delay.

Thanks again

I'd certainly keep pushing them to reimburse your out of pocket expenses as a priority, as there is far less scope for debate about those and they're clearly required to refund these, provided they're reasonable.

The separate compensation issue is much more blurred though - there is no clear definition of exactly what is and isn't extraordinary circumstances and it's certainly not as simple as ATC issues or weather, in that system outages may indeed count, depending on whose system it is (e.g. it could have been an ATC one, or an airport one, etc, rather than one within the airline's control - my suspicion would be that it was the airport-level Collins Aerospace one that was subjected to a major ransomware cyberattack, and therefore likely to be deemed outside the airline's control).

There may be scope for discussion about knock-on delays too, so it might be arguable that a delay in Berlin shouldn't be considered justification to dismiss a claim for a cancellation elsewhere on the following day, but again there's no universally applicable precedent to rely on.  It sounds unlikely that EJ will change tack, so make sure you get a final response from them and then take it to AviationADR if you remain unhappy - it doesn't cost anything so there's nothing to lose, but it's a slow drawn-out process and you won't find out for months whether you'll get anywhere.

Hi So have an update on this, we escalated to ADR and submitted our claim on the 9th of October and received the operator's defence last week. As you might imagine it was very formal and detailed and centred around the flight matrix, as you rightly summised they have cited knock-on delays of that aircraft's schedule over the previous 24 hours which originated in Berlin. Below is the salient paragraph relating to the events that led up to the aircraft having to stay in Berlin overnight resulting in our flight from Barcelona to Mcr being cancelled. Flight EZY2202 was heavily delayed on departure from BER due to the ground handling delays caused by the on-going outage of non-easyJet IT systems at the airport. It was permitted to depart by ATC at 21:26 with a delay of 1 hour coded 55 – Departure control and 11 min coded 89 – Restrictions at departure airport. However, the ATC did not allow the flight to take off due to BER curfew commencing at 21:29, and it had to return back to stand at 22:05: TOPS – Flight Details – Movement Info – EZY2202 BER MAN 26SEP25 5 14. With the Aircraft and crew stuck out of base in BER, the Airline had no alternative but to delay flight EZY2202 overnight and cancel the first wave flights scheduled to be operated on the Aircraft, including the Flight. 15. 16. When easyJet delays a flight overnight, we rename the flight for the following date by changing the first digit of the original flight number to 9, as none of our revenue flights start with a 9. Flight EZY2202 was re-scheduled to operate as EZY9202 on 27 September 2025: They then summarise in paragraph form their reasons for rejecting the claim with the final conclusion: REASONABLE MEASURES 32. 33. 34. 35. In Eglitis v Latvijas Republikas Ekonomikas Ministrija (Case C-294/10) the Court of Justice of the European Union (the “CJEU”) held that, while Article 5(3) includes a provision which requires carriers to use all reasonable measures to avoid the disruption of flights, that provision is limited to ensure that it "does not result in the air carrier being led to make intolerable sacrifices in the light of the capacities of its undertaking at the relevant time". Furthermore, in Wallentin-Hermann v Alitalia (Case C-549/07) the CJEU held that reasonable measures must be “appropriate to the situation, that is to say measures which are, at the time those extraordinary circumstances arise, meet, inter alia, conditions which are technically and economically viable to the air carrier concerned”. The Airline took all reasonable measures to avoid disruption by having spare aircraft and crew within our network and utilising these assets as required to minimise the disruption. It would be economically unviable for easyJet to maintain fully crewed redundant aircraft at each and every airport to which it operates to or from, in sufficient number to cover any number of potential disruptions. Save for having an unlimited amount of spare aircraft and crew at all airports, an option which would amount to an “intolerable sacrifice” given the disproportionate cost involved, the disruption that materialised could not be avoided. Accordingly, the Airline’s maintains that the measures taken were appropriate to the situation and those that were technically and economically viable at the time and which mitigated the inconvenience to the Passenger(s) as best as possible in the circumstances. There were no other reasonable measures which could have been taken to avoid the cause of the disruption to the flight or the disruption itself. GENERAL CONTINGENCIES CONCLUSION 52. In short, the Flight was cancelled due to extraordinary circumstances and there were no further measures that could have been taken by the Airline to mitigate the disruption So I am now invite to give final passenger comments so any help/advice would be appreciated.