Delayed Flight 17 August 2022 at 1:08PM in Flight delay compensation 1 reply 92 views

Kcbhoy69

Any of you legal eagles out there help me with my query

I recently had a flight delayed nearly by 5 hours resulting on us missing our connecting flight.

Now after filling out the compensation claim form the airline has refuses it on the grounds of operational circumstances outwith their control. Now I know for fact as the pilot informed us the reason why the flight was delayed was the crew had maxed their hours.

Now I have the below online , so do I still have the right for compensation 

Complying with flight crew rest requirements

Regulations are set in place to ensure that members of the crew, meaning pilots and flight attendants, are well rested before the flight. Sometimes the crew may max out their hours because of schedulin difficulties or a rotational delay (a flight, which was delayed because of the late arrival of a previous flight).

In these situations, unless the airline can replace the crew, there’s a good chance that the plane will be grounded.

Just like in the previous case, these circumstances fall within the carrier’s control (i.e. ensuring the appropriate scheduling, having crew on stand-by, etc) and do not exonerate them from liability. Hence, according to EC261/2004 if your flight has been delayed because the crew maxed out its hours, then you are entitled to compensation.

eskbanker

Kcbhoy69 said:

I recently had a flight delayed nearly by 5 hours resulting on us missing our connecting flight.

Now after filling out the compensation claim form the airline has refuses it on the grounds of operational circumstances outwith their control. Now I know for fact as the pilot informed us the reason why the flight was delayed was the crew had maxed their hours.

Those aren't mutually exclusive - crew will reach the end of their hours because of another reason, so that original underlying root cause can be outside an airline's control.  Difficult to generalise though, what were the circumstances?