Difficult fight claim

adibell

Hello,
This has been bothering me for years, and I'm trying to find out if there may be anything I can do now, or am I too late?...
I had a flight with Norwegian Airlines in 2013 that was delayed by 31 hours and 27 minutes. I tried to make the claim starting back in 2017 via Resolver, and was told that it was "caused by extraordinary circumstances which could not have been avoided even if all reasonable measures had been taken."
In November 2018, I happened to read about raising the complaint with an ADR, so I tried again, taking the case up with Aviation ADR. They told me:

"The airline you have complained of is a ‘non-EU’ carrier. With non-EU carriers, we are only able to investigate complaints when the flight in question ‘departed’ a UK airport. In this case, your flight did not depart from a UK airport and the complaint therefore falls outside of our jurisdiction."

This seemed ridiculous, as I thought that claims are valid when also flying TO EU airports....on top of the fact that Norwegian Airlines is actually registered in Ireland - so does that not make them an EU Airline anyway!?

I kept intending to get back on top of the claim, but had no idea what I could do, so it's ended up dragging on until now before I've gotten the motivation to tackle it again. However, I just read about the statute of limitations rule regarding having 6 years to take it to court. Does this mean that I will now have basically no chance to win this case?

I'll be gutted if I've left it too long, as it seems as though they've successfully fobbed me off and gotten away with it. However, I wondered if there are any other avenues I might be able to try, or whether the fact that I've actually been trying to chase it up repeatedly (i.e. when I started trying to chase them, it was only 4 years after the flight itself) will help me out?

Thank you if anyone can shed any light on this. 

Adrian

Caz3121

adibell said:

However, I just read about the statute of limitations rule regarding having 6 years to take it to court. Does this mean that I will now have basically no chance to win this case?

As it is over 6 years, Norwegian can happily ignore you or reject your claim knowing that there is nothing you can do (you need to commence court proceedings within 6 years of the flight)
as an aside - Why was the flight delayed? (if extraordinary circumstances then there would have been no compensation due)

adibell

Thank you Caz,

That’s a real shame, but I understand that I’ve let it go on for so long, and so I only have myself to blame It’s really frustrating that each stage that I did try came up against a dead end and it meant I ended up losing the motivation.....which is exactly what the airlines probably count on in these cases! Drat!

The flight was delayed due to “Extraordinary Circumstances” though the further details of the flight cancellation state:

Reason for disruption: This delay was caused by unforseen technical difficulties

....this doesn’t really give much in the way of information as to why the delay was caused, and I would argue that a ‘technical difficulty’ could Have been from any number of preventable reasons...

Adrian

Alan_Bowen

Technical difficulties are not classed as extraordinary so there might well have been a valid claim but after 6 years it is too late to find out.