Cancelled flight and new flight 2 days later delayed by more than 4 hours

Advocatus_Diaboli

After a wonderful holiday in Crete our return flight to Luton from Heraklion on Wednesday should have left at 22:10. However the plane had a technical fault and was cancelled at around midnight. 

Our tour operator eventually got us to a hotel at 3.30am. On the Thursday morning we were informed that our return flight would take off at 12 noon on the Friday.
on the Friday we were picked up by our tour operator in the morning and taken to the airport. We checked in our baggage by 10:00 and were informed that our new flight was delayed until 16:30. 

We understand that an empty plane had to be sent out from Gatwick to pick us up as the original replacement flight also had a technical problem.
I have read through guidance about claims for compensation and I believe I can claim £350 for each passenger for a cancelled flight and also £350 for each passenger for a delayed flight. So am I due £700 per passenger? I have submitted a claim for each flight.
Additionally we incurred costs at the airport on the Wednesday night and then additional costs at the airport on the Friday. These came to over £130 and the airline have already refunded these in total.
grateful for any advice. Thanks

eskbanker

I believe that it'll depend on the status of the Friday flight - if it was a flight that was scheduled in advance in a published timetable, then you ought to be able to claim for a delay to that published schedule, but if it was simply a short-notice emergency repatriation flight specifically to replace the Wednesday one then that'll potentially jeopardise a delay claim if it was being operated on a best endeavours basis.  What did the airport departure boards show on the Friday?

Advocatus_Diaboli

The departure board showed it as delayed until 1630. Our new boarding passes printed by the check-in desk showed the take of time as 12 noon. All the original messages from the airline showed 12 noon. I have kept the boarding passes and taken screen prints of messages.

eskbanker

Advocatus_Diaboli said:

I have read through guidance about claims for compensation and I believe I can claim £350 for each passenger for a cancelled flight and also £350 for each passenger for a delayed flight. So am I due £700 per passenger? I have submitted a claim for each flight.

There's probably not much point in speculating further - now that you've submitted your claim it's just a case of waiting to see what the airline comes back with and taking it from there!

jimi_man

Hi. 

There was a legal judgement on this a couple of years ago and the Court of Justice EU ruled that double compensation was due in these circumstances. 

So, barring any claim of ‘extraordinary circumstances’ by the airline then I think you’d have a case. 

eskbanker

jimi_man said:

There was a legal judgement on this a couple of years ago and the Court of Justice EU ruled that double compensation was due in these circumstances. 

So, barring any claim of ‘extraordinary circumstances’ by the airline then I think you’d have a case. 

Yes, it was C--832/18 A and Others v Finnair Oyj that established the principle of multiple compensation payments when rerouting:

Article 7(1) thereof, must be interpreted as meaning that an air passenger who has received compensation for the cancellation of a flight and has accepted the re-routing flight offered to him is entitled to compensation for the delay of the re-routing flight, where that delay is such as to give rise to entitlement to compensation and the air carrier of the re-routing flight is the same as that of the cancelled flight

but it still seems to me that it's not completely identical circumstances if the rerouting isn't onto an alternative scheduled timetabled flight but a hastily (sort of!) arranged replacement one where the schedule might be regarded as being a bit less definitive.  However, that's just supposition rather than fact, and it may be that OP's airline coughs up for both, but if they don't it'll be interesting to see what their line of argument is....

jimi_man

eskbanker said:

jimi_man said:

There was a legal judgement on this a couple of years ago and the Court of Justice EU ruled that double compensation was due in these circumstances. 

So, barring any claim of ‘extraordinary circumstances’ by the airline then I think you’d have a case. 

Yes, it was C--832/18 A and Others v Finnair Oyj that established the principle of multiple compensation payments when rerouting:

Article 7(1) thereof, must be interpreted as meaning that an air passenger who has received compensation for the cancellation of a flight and has accepted the re-routing flight offered to him is entitled to compensation for the delay of the re-routing flight, where that delay is such as to give rise to entitlement to compensation and the air carrier of the re-routing flight is the same as that of the cancelled flight

but it still seems to me that it's not completely identical circumstances if the rerouting isn't onto an alternative scheduled timetabled flight but a hastily (sort of!) arranged replacement one where the schedule might be regarded as being a bit less definitive.  However, that's just supposition rather than fact, and it may be that OP's airline coughs up for both, but if they don't it'll be interesting to see what their line of argument is....

Yes I get that and in principle it doesn’t seem right to me, since it’s technically one journey (with a replacement aircraft). 

The CJEU qualified their decision with:

The CJEU affirmed that this finding is backed up by the purpose of the Regulation. Passengers who are exposed to both the inconvenience of a cancellation, and the inconvenience of a delay, should be compensated for each of these inconveniences.

I will be interested to see the outcome of this. OP please can you report back with the result?