Small Claims Procedure under EU261 law

Zori29

Hi all, I was looking through this forum for a while trying to find some useful information (and I did!), but I'm still a bit confused with the process of Small Claims Procedure within EY261 law. I'd like to ask your help in clarifying few topics before I send my claim to the court.
The situation is - Etihad Airways unreasonably denied my boarding on flight from Munich to Singapore (via Abu Dhabi).

Long story short - me and my husband planned a 3 weeks vacation in Indonesia. I'm Ukrainian, he is EU citizen. We bought tickets Munich-Singapore-Munich with Etihad and ticket to/from Indonesia via low cost airlines. Generally Ukrainians need visa to enter Singapore, but there is a special visa exemption called VFTF for Ukrainians, that allows to enter Singapore (enter, not transit) for up to 96 hours if a passenger has an onward ticket to another country. It is also said that a person may enter Singapore by any mode of transport but must depart Singapore by air, which means that it shouldn't be one reservation or one airline ticket. I'm not allowed to post links, but more details can be found on ica. gov. sg site 

Airline Staff in Munich was not aware of this rule and didn't want to check it, so they just denied my boarding (even though I was showing them the ticket to Indonesia and official web-site with this rule). Because of that I needed to rebook the second leg of my ticket from Abu Dhabi-Singapore to Abu Dhabi-Bangkok on the very last minute, I also lost a ticket from Singapore to Yogyakarta and needed to buy additional 2 tickets in order to get to Yogyakarta, which was our destination. All of that costed us 1000 EUR, I needed to fly separately from my husband, I didn't have a chance to see Singapore (we had a plan to stay in Singapore for 1 day), and half of my vacation I spend on browsing internet about the same issues trying to understand if maybe I was wrong somewhere (disclaimer - no). As I still had ticket from Singapore to Munich on our way back, I was also very stressed by the fact that I can be not allowed boarding to Singapore, because Scoot may also not be acknowledged about the VFTF. But it appeared that my my worries were groundless, I was allowed to board to Singapore and enter it on our way back (which actually proves that Etihad was wrong denying my boarding).

So, what I did so far:
- Contacted Etihad Customer support - they refuse to admit their fault.
- Contacted Luftfahrt-Bundesamt - I got answer from them that they will check my claim, but their decision can't force Etihad to pay for my loss
- Created a claim via ODR, but didn't get any answer from Etihad there.

It looks that the only option I'm left with, is Small Claims Procedure to which are my questions related to:
1) What is the proper jurisdiction for my case? I reside in Austria, Etihad is in Emirates, flight was from Munich. If it is Austria, I'm a bit confused if they accept Small Claims - on e-justice site there is information: There is no small claims procedure as such in Austrian law. However, the Austrian Code of Civil Procedure (ZPO) provides for a simplified procedure or specific procedural rules in certain matters brought before the District Courts.". But when I go to Austrian site, it looks, like they follow this procedure.
2) What is the proper defendant's address in form A? Should it be Etihad Airways with Munich airport address? 
3) To how much am I entitled? As far as I understand, I can claim 1000 EUR of additional costs that occurred because of Etihad error + 600 EUR of compensation according to EU261 + court fees, right? Is there any possibility to get more for all the stress and rush they caused with the denial?

Will be grateful for all your advices and tips

SiliconChip

Given that there is no UK element to your claim and this is a site for UK consumer issues I'd suggest that you might be better to find an Austrian site to ask your questions, it's not that likely that anyone on here will know enough to be able to give you much help.

DullGreyGuy

There is no small claims court in the UK either, we similarly have the civil procedural rules that enable small value claims ("small track") to go through a more basic process which limits costs.

You need to confirm where you bought the tickets from and check the legal jurisdiction in the terms of carriage applicable to your purchase. That will determine which is the primary legal jurisdiction but if it is within the EU then it may be possible to issue in another appropriate EU jurisdiction. You'd be better off asking in a local forum not the UK

bris

You need to sue them in the in  Emirate of Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

eskbanker

bris said:

You need to sue them in the in  Emirate of Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

Not when OP is looking to exercise their rights under the denied boarding provisions of the EC 261/2004 regulations, which would need to be handled by an EU court!  That's not to say that suing Etihad in Abu Dhabi isn't possible, but it's unlikely to deliver what OP is seeking, unless they have enough knowledge of Emirati consumer legislation to believe that it would be more generous than the EU's....