Air Canada claim - how strong is my case?

leadlion

I recently had an Air Canada flight booked from Lima to London via Montreal. Shortly before it was due to depart, the first flight (to Montreal) was delayed and I subsequently got rerouted on a later itinerary via Madrid. I arrived at Heathrow over 13 hours late.

At the time of the initial delay and just before the automatic reroute, I received an official email from Air Canada stating the reason was because ‘a mechanical issue on an earlier flight caused the scheduled aircraft to arrive late.’

Given that the cause was mechanical and because I was rerouted through an EU hub (therefore one leg of the journey completely within the EU/UK), I understood that EU/GB264 legislation would take effect.

I opened a claim with Air Canada but they got back to me saying that after reviewing my case they had determined that the cause of the delay was weather related and therefore I would not be entitled to compensation.

Clearly it cannot be both mechanical and weather related – it has to be one of them. I emailed back with documentation of the original cause attached but it has been well over a month and I have heard nothing. In the last week I sent a follow up email but am still waiting.

Before I take this further I wanted to ask if I have a strong claim here – and if so how do I proceed to escalating it?

eskbanker

Neither the UK nor the EU regulations apply, because their applicability is based on the end points of the journey, i.e. connecting via the EU en route between two non-EU locations doesn't bring them into play - the relevant case law is Airhelp Limited v Austrian Airlines AG (Case C-451/20).

It may be that you have other rights under Air Canada's own policies, or any national options available to those departing from Peru.

leadlion

OK, I guess I would then chase AirCanada - but how worth it is it? They’ve muddied the waters with their contradicting claim and I guess if they’re not being externally enforced to pay any compensation they can make up anything they want.

eskbanker

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81961036#Comment_81961036

They'd need to comply with their published policies so you'd be best advised to read up on their conditions of carriage, in order to ascertain what their stated obligations (if any) are. It may also be that there are Canadian aviation regulations that offer passenger rights here.

Humphreyshalfmoon

Canada does indeed have decent delay protection but not if the delay was due to weather! There is also an effective enforcer of the rules but their backlog has reached three years, yes years not months! The whole system appears to be close to a complete breakdown, so to avoid wasting your time, it might be worth checking the weather in Montreal at the time the plane should have left, Montreal is not a good connection point in winter due to the brutal level of snow which frequently falls…..