Compensation for delayed flights Discussion Area

aminn

thanks for your help all!

wll persevere and let you know what happens.

russetred

My family of 5 had our Monarch flight from Luxor to Gatwick delayed by 8 hours from 17:30 till 01:35.The cosmos rep tried to avoid telling anyone any info and claimed that no compensation would be available as Monarch airlines are seperate from Cosmos,odd as the website is now Monarch holidays.Thankfully one passenger was a lawyer and forced the rep to provide a meal and 2 soft drinks per passenger.I believe we were also entitled to 2 free phone calls which we did not get.We had hotel rooms paid for in London as we had to fly home to Scotland the next day.Due to the delay we couldn't use them,can we claim the cost back? Also we paid for flight upgrades which did not provide the services as stated in the brochure.Who do we complain to Cosmos or Monarch? One more point the previous week's flight was also delayed by 8 hours due to aircraft problems but our flight crew told us that Monarch were a plane down due to faults being discovered during routine maintenance.Basically Monarch had known for quite some time that they did not have a plane for the 17:30 Luxor flight but chose to inconvenience their passengers as a cheaper option.As the crew told us Monarch had several options open to them but chose to use an over stretched plane and crew to fly "rescue missions"

dzug1

russetred wrote: »

My family of 5 had our Monarch flight from Luxor to Gatwick delayed by 8 hours from 17:30 till 01:35.The cosmos rep tried to avoid telling anyone any info and claimed that no compensation would be available as Monarch airlines are seperate from Cosmos,odd as the website is now Monarch holidays.Thankfully one passenger was a lawyer and forced the rep to provide a meal and 2 soft drinks per passenger.I believe we were also entitled to 2 free phone calls which we did not get.We had hotel rooms paid for in London as we had to fly home to Scotland the next day.Due to the delay we couldn't use them,can we claim the cost back? Also we paid for flight upgrades which did not provide the services as stated in the brochure.Who do we complain to Cosmos or Monarch? One more point the previous week's flight was also delayed by 8 hours due to aircraft problems but our flight crew told us that Monarch were a plane down due to faults being discovered during routine maintenance.Basically Monarch had known for quite some time that they did not have a plane for the 17:30 Luxor flight but chose to inconvenience their passengers as a cheaper option.As the crew told us Monarch had several options open to them but chose to use an over stretched plane and crew to fly "rescue missions"

No compensation I'm afraid. Yes you were entitled to 2 phone calls, but it's too late now. You were entitled to be looked after during the delay which (with a struggle admittedly) you were. But delays as such do not lead to compensation, only those caused by overbooking or cancellation of the flight - and even then there are get out clauses.

The hotels - you are on a loser there.

Upgrades - you may get something there. Complain to Cosmos.

Your gleanings from the crew - irrelevant, even if true. Don't take what they say as gospel. They may have issues with the company themselves and embroider the situation. They may not actually know and make something up to avoid appearing ignorant.

I'd suggest your travel insurance might help but suspect the delay wasn't long enough for it to kick in. 12 hours rings a bell.

samlonglegs

Hi there

Any help on this issue would be great.

I had an Easyjet flight London Stansted to Barcelona on Friday evening, 6pm. After delaying departure for 3 hours, they eventually told us that the staff on board of the plane had worked their maximum number of hours and would therefore be unable to fly the plane - and because there was no backup staff available, the flight was cancelled.
We were put up in a hotel and offered a substitute flight Saturday morning at 9am, ie more than 12 hours later than the original, which I took.

Am I entitled to compensation of E250 or is this 'extraordinary circumstances'?

Cheers

Sam

mad_rich

samlonglegs wrote: »

Am I entitled to compensation of E250 or is this 'extraordinary circumstances'?

Stansted is a major base for easyJet, and Luton is just up the road. An airline should be able to rustle up some spare crew at its base. Going out of hours is, after all, not that extraordinary at all...

Ask for compo and, when they refuse, ask them to provide details of exactly how the crew went out of hours, when this became known, and what measures they took to prevent the cancellation of the flight.

dzug1

samlonglegs wrote: »

Hi there

Any help on this issue would be great.

I had an Easyjet flight London Stansted to Barcelona on Friday evening, 6pm. After delaying departure for 3 hours, they eventually told us that the staff on board of the plane had worked their maximum number of hours and would therefore be unable to fly the plane - and because there was no backup staff available, the flight was cancelled.
We were put up in a hotel and offered a substitute flight Saturday morning at 9am, ie more than 12 hours later than the original, which I took.

Am I entitled to compensation of E250 or is this 'extraordinary circumstances'?

Cheers

Sam

Could be argued either way. Madrich has suggested a possible way forward.

I'm not oversold on the 'should be able to rustle up some spare crew' though - certainly late in the day when most will have worked their hours it's not a foregone conclusion. And maybe they HAD spare crew who had already been used to prevent another cancellation.

If the root cause of the delay was air traffic control/weather earlier in the day then yes, it's extraordinary circumstances - knock on effects can be taken into account.

David_Bicker

Whilst I often choose to fly with low-cost carriers to Europe (and fortunately I've never been delayed seriously with them), in IMHO its often a case of you get what you pay for - yes I know that airlines have to look after you during a delay but with cheap airlines you get cheap staff and service when things go wrong.

We flew Virgin Atlantic to Joburg in June and we were delayed by 12 hours. We were informed exactly the reason why (aircraft went tech) when we arrived at the airport, given a bus pass to the hotel that Virgin had booked us in near Heathrow, a free phone card each and we were fed and watered all evening.

On return I wrote a letter to them and stated that we had been inconvenienced as we missed a day of holiday, incurred hotel cost at the other end that we needed not incur if we were on time and that their ground staff at Heathrow had handled the situation perfectly.

I received a response from Richard Branson's PA within a week and they have reimbursed us the hotel cost and given us each 25,000 airmiles - thats enough for a free return to New York!! :beer:

So - if you don't ask, you don't get I guess!

Shona99

dzug1 wrote: »

Could be argued either way. Madrich has suggested a possible way forward.

I'm not oversold on the 'should be able to rustle up some spare crew' though - certainly late in the day when most will have worked their hours it's not a foregone conclusion. And maybe they HAD spare crew who had already been used to prevent another cancellation.

If the root cause of the delay was air traffic control/weather earlier in the day then yes, it's extraordinary circumstances - knock on effects can be taken into account.

I was very interested to discover that the "root cause" of a delay earlier in the day is "extraordinary circumstances" and that "knock on" effects can be taken into account.

Is this based upon any reported case or an empirical reading of the legislation or possibly based upon a legal opinion you have sourced or alternatively is this just your personal opinion of the interpretation of EC 261/2004?

The statement is so categorical I can only conclude that this has been taken from some form of legal authority and you have for the purposes of brevity simply overlooked citation of the source.

How much earlier in the day can an airline search back to discover a "root cause"-or can they even go back to the previous day or days?

Does not Article 5 provide a defence for the monetary compensation tariff consequent to cancellation (rather than a delay) where the cancellation was caused by extraordinary circumstances?

In your view therefore the proximate cause of the cancellation was weather or alternatively a "weather delay"?

I'm therefore having trouble reconciling this with recital 14 of the Regulation

(14) As under the Montreal Convention, obligations on operating air carriers should be limited or excluded in cases where an event has been caused by extraordinary circumstances which could not have been avoided even if all reasonable measures had been taken. Such circumstances may, in particular, occur in cases of political instability, meteorological conditions incompatible with the operation of the flight concerned, security risks, unexpected flight safety shortcomings and strikes that affect the operation of an operating air carrier.

This recital appears to refer to metoerological conditions incompatible with the operation of the flight concerned.

Was the weather affecting this particular flight and did this provide the proximate cause of the cancellation?

I'm also trying to find reference to the term "root cause" within the regulation. I'm not familiar with this as an English legal term of art but this could be a legal term of art in a foreign jurisdiction.

dzug1

Shona99 wrote: »

I was very interested to discover that the "root cause" of a delay earlier in the day is "extraordinary circumstances" and that "knock on" effects can be taken into account.

Is this based upon any reported case or an empirical reading of the legislation or possibly based upon a legal opinion you have sourced or alternatively is this just your personal opinion of the interpretation of EC 261/2004?

snipped

I'm also trying to find reference to the term "root cause" within the regulation. I'm not familiar with this as an English legal term of art but this could be a legal term of art in a foreign jurisdiction.

.

I am speculating as to what might have been the cause, not making a categorical statement as to what is was.

But anyway how about this:

(15) 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.

..

I really don't understand what you are on about about 'root cause' - it's an every day English expression. I've no idea and care less about whether it has a different legal meaning or not.

Shona99

dzug1 wrote: »

I am speculating as to what might have been the cause, not making a categorical statement as to what is was.

But anyway how about this:

(15) 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.


..

I really don't understand what you are on about about 'root cause' - it's an every day English expression. I've no idea and care less about whether it has a different legal meaning or not.

Perhaps you should care more upon the effect of words-especially where a reader might rely upon what is being stated.

The burden of proof is placed upon the carrier to demonstrate the defence.

You stated quite categorically that "knock on" effects can avail a carrier of the defence under Article 5.3 of the defence of "extraordinary circumstances" referring back to a "root cause".

A cancellation has to be "caused" by extraordinary circumstances for the defence to be operable in law. Would you not agree?

We are concerned therefore with cause and effect. You gave the example of weather providing a cause of a cancellation-not prhaps as a "direct" cause of a cancellation but as perhaps a "consequential" effect of weather from earlier in the day.

Consider the following situation. A carrier advances a defence of extraordinary circumstances based upon the fact that a weather founded disruption earlier in the day had caused crew to be unavailable to perform a planned flight. The carrier then chooses to cancel that flight.

What is the proximate cause of the cancellation?

Is the proximate cause of the cancellation "weather" or is the cause lack of available crew?

You appear to be saying that the carrier is able to advance an earlier ( just how long back in time is unclear) weather-founded disruption to sustain a defence for the compensation tariff as the cause of the cancellation . The "root cause" ( in everyday English speech as you put it) was weather.

Is this correct-or at least is there any legal authority to make such a contention?

Now we could also look at Recital 15-for which precise purpose you dont make clear-other than we should look at it and presumably obtain a self-evident truth or conclusion which perhaps you could elaborate upon.

Are we to look at Recital 15 as well in terms of "everyday English speech" or in terms of anticipating how a judge might or should attempt to construct the intent/effect of the legislation in accordance with usual methods of legal interpretation