Passengers entitled to compensation for 2018 Ryanair strike cancellations

NightLight789

TL;DR

If you had a Ryanair flight canceled in 2018 due to their staff strikes, you are entitled to compensation after a court settlement. Ryanair make claiming difficult/impossible, so I'm sharing what I've learned (in the hopes of saving other people time and frustration).

Has anyone else struggled to file a claim? 

My experience

I had flights booked with Ryanair in the summer of 2018. The outbounds were cancelled - due to their staff strikes - and they had no availability to fly out before the return was due. They refunded the flights but rejected our claim for compensation under EU261.

They fought for over 5 years in the courts to avoid paying compensation. But they were fined by Spanish regulators in August 2023 for not paying and in November 2023 they settled in UK court and agreed to pay compensation. But….

Tips

In our case - and I can only assume many others’ - the details for these bookings have been removed from Ryanair's system. You can only claim online, and their system won't recognise the flights or booking references. 

On 3 chat conversations with Ryanair, they claimed: 
- my booking didn’t exist [untrue]
- they didn’t owe compensation for strikes [untrue]
- statute of limitations had run out [untrue] 
- that they simply couldn’t help but that I could easily file via the automated system [untrue].

But don't give up!

The next step was Aviation ADR, but they were equally unhelpful. The system doesn’t recognise my flight as having existed at all. Emails requesting explanations were ignored, and their phone never picks up. (To be fair, Aviation ADR did say in 2018 that they wouldn't help with compensation on these). 

But don't give up!

Final option was to pay £70 and file a court claim: 1000EUR for 4 cancelled flights for 2 people, £470 in interest and £70 in the court costs. Waiting to hear on the result, and I can share here.

If you had a flight cancelled during these staff strikes (roughly end of July to end of September 2018), you are most likely owed 250EUR per person per flight in compensation. If the Ryanair system won’t work for you and Aviation ADR don’t help, then you can file a court claim at Money Claim Online [MSE won't let me post the link].

Form guidance

The info I used in the form:

Defendant:  

Ryanair DAC c/o AviationADR

Address:

Line 1: Consumer Dispute Resolution Ltd

Line 2: 12–14 Walker Avenue

Line 3: Stratford Office Village

Line 4: Wolverton Mill East, MK12 5TW

Claim: (something like)

The Claimants were booked on flights FRxxx (STN–GRX, 09/08/18) and FRxxx (GRX–STN, 12/08/18) under booking ref xxxx. FRxxx was cancelled by the Defendant. The Claimants attempted to rebook but no alternative flights were available for the following 2 days, meaning they could not travel to their destination or use their return flight. The Defendant did not provide suitable rerouting.

Under EC261/UK261, passengers on flights under 1500km are entitled to €250 per passenger per cancelled or unusable flight. For 2 passengers and 2 disrupted flights, compensation totals €1,000.

The Claimants applied for compensation in 2018, but the Defendant wrongly rejected the claim. Recent legal rulings confirmed compensation is due for these 2018 cancellations. Attempts to resolve this with the Defendant and ADR have failed.

The Claimants claim €1,000 (converted to GBP), plus interest under s.69 County Courts Act, and court fees.

Interest

I included interest at £0.19 per day, and they then add that on to the claim.

I have assembled my evidence (proof of my bookings, Ryanair email confirming the cancellation, their original compensation rejection, chat transcripts with their support staff), but I’ve not been asked for any of that by the judge yet. I will share the result here.

Hope this helps someone!

eskbanker

NightLight789 said:

They fought for over 5 years in the courts to avoid paying compensation. But they were fined by Spanish regulators in August 2023 for not paying and in November 2023 they settled in UK court and agreed to pay compensation.

[...]

The Claimants applied for compensation in 2018, but the Defendant wrongly rejected the claim. Recent legal rulings confirmed compensation is due for these 2018 cancellations. Attempts to resolve this with the Defendant and ADR have failed.

I was curious about the significance of November 2023, as I was under the impression that there'd already been pre-2018 EU case law determining that strikes weren't deemed extraordinary circumstances, although the 2017 case was specifically about a wildcat strike:

Strike by flight staff

The Court has ruled that neither a ‘wildcat strike’ by flight staff following the surprise announcement of a restructuring of the air carrier, nor a strike organised by a trade union of the staff of an air carrier that is intended to assert workers’ demands do constitute an ‘extraordinary circumstance’, and thus do not release the airline from its obligation to pay compensation in the event of cancellation or long delay of flights. The existence of prior negotiations with workers’ representatives does not affect this conclusion. ‘External’ strikes, such as strike action taken by air traffic controllers or airport staff, may constitute an extraordinary circumstance nonetheless.

Cases C-195/17 Krüsemann and Others, C-28/20 Airhelp, C-613/20 Eurowings and
http://curia.europa.eu/juris/liste.jsf?language=en&num=c-195/17
https://curia.europa.eu/juris/liste.jsf?lgrec=fr&td=;ALL&language=en&num=C-28/20&jur=C https://curia.europa.eu/juris/liste.jsf?num=C-613/20

https://transport.ec.europa.eu/system/files/2022-03/2022-summary-of-the-most-relevant-cjeu-judgements.pdf

However, the CAA were also pursuing Ryanair on this and the 2021 judgment went against Ryanair, confirmed by the appeal court in early 2022:

https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/CAA-v-Ryanair-judgment.pdf

Is it cases like this that you're citing?