Who should get the flight delay compensation?

tain

I manage the travel at my work - I'd encourage staff to claim and keep the cash for themselves regardless.

Reason being, the organisation wouldn't care in the slightest for the compensation*, there is no policy or procedure for putting the cash back into circulation, plus I'm pretty sure no staff care enough to try and get their organisation money back even though they were the one inconvenienced (on work time or not).

If we want the compensation to come back to the organisation, then we need to be actively forcing staff to claim for it. Which is really way beyond the type of organisation we want to be. Just let staff have the perk.


*NB: We probably wouldn't be aware of the possibility of compensation in the first place, and the person claiming it wouldn't be rewarded for their honesty or anything. Of course we would like the cash back.

florere

Depends on whether you were being payed for the time you were sitting around, if you were not being paid then you should have it, but if you were you should offer it back to your employer, chances are it would be difficult to put the money back into the system so you would be allowed to keep it anyway.

GrumpyWithMoney

Why not discuss it with your employer?

jgriggle

GrumpyWithMoney wrote: »

Why not discuss it with your employer?

I'm going to guess that the employer is intending to keep the compensation, hence the question.

My opinion is that if the 7 hours wait wasn't in company time, and if the compensation claim is being done by the employee in their own time the cost of the delay to the business was nothing. The employee should get the compensation.

If the employee was paid overtime for the delay, and they're doing the claim on company time then that is a cost to the business and the company should get the compensation.

rih2010

Even if your employers are / were aware of the delay and your claim, they should only get a cut of the compensation to cover the wages they paid you while you were sat on that plane. The rest should be yours.
If you weren't being paid during the delay, you keep it all as the inconvenience only impacted your personal time, not the company's time.

tgroom57

You make the claim, you keep any compensation.
Flying is not without risk, not just the obvious risks but DVT etc and raised stress levels from being randomly held on a plane. (Ebola, anyone?)
Your employer is lucky you agreed to fly at all.

If in any doubt, agree it with them before you fly next time.

LXdaddy

The compensation should go to the traveller (in my opinion)

I don't think it matters if you are travelling in "work" time or "your own" time. I'm a frequent flyer and have been delayed many times and managed to claim compensation once and I kept that.

I'm salaried so no question of is this hour being paid or not - I'm paid the same each month regardless of how many hours I spend in the office or in the airport or in the hotel or at home on my laptop.

In the most recent case I was delayed about 7 hours, my flight took off but then returned to the airport, we de-planed and were rescheduled to a later flight. I spent most of the delay working on my laptop. So I missed a day in my destination and didn't do the scheduled work but didn't "waste" it doing what I wanted to do.

killick_becki

I was in this situation in 2012. I asked my boss and he said that I was the one that was inconvenienced thus I should have the compensation.

Having said this, my work isn't typical, i'm an academic, so i'm sure other bosses will react differently.

Have a word with your boss then it is clear one way or the other.

Augustus_the_Strong

If you are not being paid for your time, keep the compensation payment. If you are being paid for your time, ask your boss if you can keep the compensation payment.

debbiesmum

In my opinion, you should be allowed to keep any compensation given as a result of flight delays.

I worked for many years for an international computer manufacturer and when the question was raised about who should get air miles allocated to business travel, our opinion was the employee should get the benefit. They are the ones having to suffer the inconvenience of the likes of long haul flights, delays, etc.