European Court clarify flight delay compensation rules
20.11.09
A European Court decision has confirmed airlines must compensate passengers for long flight delays. The ruling requires airlines in the EU to compensate for delays of more than 3 hours for which they are responsible.
The ruling came in a judgment clarifying 5 year-old EU regulation which grants flat-rate compensation for cancelled flights of between €250 - €600 (£223 - £535). The judges said that regulation did not expressly provide for passengers whose flights are delayed have a right to this compensation.
Passengers who are forced to wait 3 hours or more will be compensated €600, the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg decided yesterday. This is the same as if their flight had been cancelled. Airlines will also be required not to cancel a flight unless it fits strict criteria set down in the new law.
The ruling stated: ‘Passengers on a flight that is cancelled at short notice have a right to compensation, even when they are re-routed by the airline on another flight, if they lose 3 hours or more in relation to the duration originally planned.’
The judges said that a technical problem with an aircraft could not be regarded as an ‘extraordinary circumstance’, unless the problem stemmed from events that ‘by their nature or origin are not inherent in the normal exercise of the activity of the airline concerned and are beyond its actual control’.
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