Flight delay and cancellation compensation, Ryanair ONLY

panasonic1977 · 25 January 2013 at 12:02PM

Mark2spark wrote: »

Seeing as you appear to be asking for opinions, IMO I think it's touch and go whether this could be an acceptable 'in flight safety shortcoming' excuse that a judge would wear.
The outcome is far from certain anyway, so it would be up to you to weigh up the pro's and con's from a cost POV of attending an arguing it out.
Responding along the lines of the post below yours with an explanation of your distance from the court preventing you from attending might be the best you could do.

as the flight the problem occurred on was not my flight but the flight coming out to pick us up I think the knock on of a five hour delay was avoidable. Even worse when we got to the airport it was showing a 1 hour delay which proceeded to extend by 1/2 an hour every so often until it showed a 2 hour delay. As no one at the airport seemed to know what the problem was I phoned my brother to check on the internet to see if he could find out the problem. It turned out the plane was on the ground in Madrid. Madrid is over 3 hours flying time from Tenerife so how they expected it to get here in 2 hours is beyond me. Also if the problem is as they say EC why not just reply to ASEA when asked

blondmark · 25 January 2013 at 1:10PM

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chickennugget · 25 January 2013 at 5:07PM

blondmark wrote: »

Do go through the process to the end, enjoy your stay in Dublin if you go (apparently Ryanair do a very good fare to Dublin) and tell us what happened.

Message me if I can help further.

Thanks for your really helpful advice. One question: you say to see it through to the end, but even if I win on appeal can R just appeal the decision to a higher court again? And again? There's conflicting info online about whether a respondent can appeal after a judgment and I'm concerned that even winning now would not do me any favours.

blondmark · 25 January 2013 at 5:38PM

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Shakey456 · 27 January 2013 at 3:15PM

Firstly let me say what a fantastic site.

I was on flight FR2157 from Malaga to Birmingham which arrived at 3.44am on 17/10/2012 (3 hours 49 mins late).

I used the standard letter off here and wrote to Ryanair on 15/11/12 asking for my 400 euros compensation.

Ryanair responded on 20/11/12 advising that the delay was due to an unexpected safety/technical problem with the aircraft and it was necessary to delay the flight until the fault was rectified and the aircraft cleared for operation by 'our Engineering Department' saying that 'there are situations which are outside our control of an airline such as technical faults that disrupt our flights . As this delay was outside Ryanair's control (Extraordinary Circumstances) , we regret to advise that no compensation is due under EU261'.

I therefore filed a claim using the Small Claims court process in Swords District Court pointing out that this was a technical failure as admitted by Ryanair and that their defence of Extraordinary Circumstances does not hold . Ryanair have responded to the court '' I have reviewed the tech with our Engineering Dept they have confirmed that the engine failure was an extraordinary circumstance outside of our control and thus no compensation is due.There is no way to foresee such an event.''
The Small Claims court have asked me if I want to take it to a Court Hearing but that I must attend in person , must pay my associated expenses and have been informed that it is possible for costs to be awarded against me in the Circuit Court if Ryanair issue appeal proceedings.

It feels to me that I have a valid case but that Ryanair are hoping I will go away !!!! A bit of a David V Goliath .

I just wondered what advise anybody has for me in terms of what to do next ?

I am half minded to take them all the way but clearly the thoughts of having to pick up their costs is a bit of a deterrent !! Would anybody recommend using one of those third party claims companies that take a 25% cut or realistically have I done what they would have done any way ?

My other thought is if there are similar people who are not getting anywhere with Ryanair that we might join forces and see if a lawyer might take on our case(s) on a 'no win no fee' basis

(not then end of the world though btw , Easyjet are paying up 1600 euros for a 4 hour delay from 2009 from Dalaman to Manchester when there were 4 of us travelling !!)

blondmark · 27 January 2013 at 5:59PM

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chickennugget · 27 January 2013 at 10:18PM

blondmark wrote: »

Any further appeal is limited strictly to a point of law so I wouldn't lose any sleep over that remote possibility.

Thanks for your advice Blondmark. The stress and worry of this are just not worth it! Regarding costs, I've been advised by a solicitor that judges' opinions vary widely and it's luck of the draw. If you do lose you can possibly be liable for the other side's costs, though for a circuit court these would rarely go above 10,000 euros. It's difficult to say what might happen if you lose. This is a VERY worrying high figure! Does anyone know what percentage of 'losers' end up having to pay costs? What sort of figures are likely?

We've been advised to consider appointing someone to do the advocacy, which is about 1000 euros, which they would claim back from R if we won and no fee would be payable from us if we lost. The CC can't award any more than the SC court, so we can't get a higher figure even if we win, and you can't claim travel only any legal fees I believe.

We are therefore considering just rolling over and not contesting the appeal. It's just too stressful - preparing for the case and attending court, the hassle of travel etc. simply aren't worth it. So Blondmark, if we write to the court once we get the date of the appeal and say that we're not contesting or attending, presumably it will still take place in our absence and the ruling will go against us? What we don't want is to then be summoned to court, so I hope this can't happen. Then we'll just have to cross our fingers over costs.

blondmark · 27 January 2013 at 11:18PM

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Dodgeball · 28 January 2013 at 6:23PM

Would involving the media (both social and press etc) help any of these cases. Cleary the possibilty of high legal costs compared to the value of the compensation is putting off those with good cases.

I have no legal experience or knowledge what so ever so have no idea even if this sort of thing is allowed, but there was an article in the Telegraph last week from a journalist who seems to have written a number of articles about compensation and Ryan air particulary.

blondmark · 30 January 2013 at 5:16PM

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Flight delay and cancellation compensation, Ryanair ONLY

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