Posssible Retrospective Claim

mikewwilson

Good afternoon all,

In October 2011 my partner and I were travelling from Warsaw to Hanoi, Vietnam. The flight was cancelled and we had to reschedule to the next flight 48 hours later.

At the time, we complained to the airline, which is LOT Polish Airlines (It was flight LO85). They declined the claim on the basis that the 'technical problems' were outside of their reasonable control. I'm led to believe this is a fairly standard airline response to these scenarios. We heard that the problem was with the air conditioning unit on the plane, but that is unconfirmed.

To take my complaint further I needed to submit a claim to the Polish version of the CAA. I did so, but I remember it saying at the time that I needed to provide an address in Poland to use for any legal proceedings. I didn't know what to do about this and submitted the complaint without this. I never heard back. I chased it up once but again heard nothing. I'm sorry to say I then gave up.

More recently I'm aware that courts have supported customer complaints in scenarios which appear to me to be a bit similar (i.e. airlines hiding behind the subjectivity of EU Regulation 261's definition of 'reasonable'). My questions are therefore:

1 - Is it too late for me to take this further? Are recent court rulings retrospective? Am I time-barred?

2 - If not, how can I proceed? I'm normally pretty tenacious at following things up but found the instructions on how to claim very opaque and didn't - and still don't - have a huge appetite for sending emails off to a regulatory body that hasn't replied to me at all. I've got a lot on right now and would be happy to instruct a no-win-no-fee solicitor if it meant I might see a reasonable proportion of the face value of the tickets - anything over half, for example. (There are two tickets involved, valued at around £900). However, finding a lawyer with the jurisdiction to act in Poland might not be easy.

Any advice you can give would be much appreciated.

Thanks in advance. All the best.

richardw

The answer might be in the ryanair thread. But you already aware of the ESCP, so consider that.

mikewwilson

Thanks for your reply. I've had a look on the Ryanair thread, as suggested. I think if this ended up being something I could pursue via an English court, as many are now recommending on there, I would have a decent chance of success. I also would not be time-barred because we're allowed 6 years in England.


My flight was actually London to Warsaw and then connecting onwards to Hanoi. The later flight was cancelled, leading to the 48 hour delay. Both flights were technically designated as LOT flights though the first one might have ben a code-share. I'm not sure.


Since the journey began in England, does anyone know if I can use our courts? If I do need to use the Polish courts I have been unable to find out if they have different laws on time-barring. This was all between 3 and 4 years ago and some of the initial questionnaires I've filled in for NWNF lawyers suggested I was time-barred. But others didn't so I'm just not sure.


Any further advice on how to proceed would be great.


Thanks