Flight Delay Claims Ready for Take Off - Claim 600 Euros!
Posted: 29 March 2012
I just got off the phone from talking to Simon Browning at the BBC who is covering the BIG news story of the day on You & Yours which is about the European resolution to 'clarify' flight delay and cancellation compensation.
We all complain about European Law quite a lot – I do – but this one is actually a really consumer friendly one which in a nutshell says that if someone takes off or lands in the EU and their flight is either cancelled altogether or delayed by more than 3 hours then they are entitled to compensation as below:
- EUR 250 for flights of 1500 kilometres or less (About £220).
- EUR 400 for all flights within the EU of more than 1500 km and for all other flights between 1500 - 3500 kilometres (About £350).
- EUR 600 for all other flights (About £530)
This is a great law. It's not about money for nothing, ambulance chasing etc, but about two things:
- Making sure that airlines behave and look after customers rather than chopping and changing their schedules for profit whilst leaving vulnerable consumers stranded (including the young and elderly);
- Compensation for consumers when it goes wrong as anyone who has been in that position will know it’s extremely annoying and sometimes a bit scary too.
Cancellation flights are about 2/3 of the instances and a European Court case called Sturgeon says that if a flight is delayed by more than 3 hours then it should be deemed to be cancelled. This is actually quite logical because if this were not the case airlines could legally just delay flights for 4 weeks!
Why are the airlines unhappy?
By my estimates it would cost the Airlines about £400 million per annum in the UK alone. (I’ll go into my maths another time).
This is great news for consumers
At the moment consumers who are delayed or cancelled can complain but the standard response is that it's due to 'extraordinary circumstances'. The trouble is the airlines say this a lot and its not clear what is extraordinary and what is not. My friend Hendrik at EU Claim in Holland is winning lots of these cases already and his view is that legally only 35% of instances fall into that category... meaning it's probable that delays are not extraordinary at all.
Without giving too much away I am really keen to get a service going whereby we can run these claims for consumers on a risk free basis for them. Have you been delayed or cancelled in the last 2 years? Would you like that sort of service?
Find out more on our Flight Delays Compensation page.