The Truth About EC 261
You may not have heard of regulation 261/2004, but you are probably aware of your rights to claim compensation in the event your flight is delayed.
For those of you who aren’t familiar with this regulation, it sets out the level of care, assistance and compensation airline passengers are entitled to receive in the event of a flight disruption.
Originally, the regulation was brought in to protect passengers and to stop airlines from overbooking their flights or cancelling them willy nilly. However, in 2009 in the Sturgeon case, the ECJ extended the scope of the regulation to include delays of more than 3 hours. This opened the floodgates to compensation claims and court cases testing the boundaries of this regulation. Unfortunately for the aviation industry, judges have been coming down hard on airlines.
EC regulation 261 has been highly publicised recently, following cases such as Huzar v Jet 2 and Van der Lans v KLM. Both of these cases were extremely important for the aviation industry as they set the precedent for technical claims. In other words, if your flight is delayed because of a technical issue, the airline must pay compensation.
The media has painted this as a morale victory. News outlets have said that airlines have been ‘getting away with it’’ for too long and it is ‘’about time’’ that they have been forced to face up to their responsibilities. All airlines have been portrayed as booming money-making machines that care more about counting their pennies then about their passengers. This is simply not true. Sure, there are some airlines that are still making good money. However, the majority of airlines today are making huge losses, some even in the billions!
Aside from the ludicrous rulings that have come out of some courts, the problem is that this compensation is not fair. Passengers are entitled to a fixed sum in compensation regardless of the amount they paid for their ticket. This means some passengers are actually getting back more money then they paid for their ticket in the first place, especially when you take in to account that children and babies are also entitled to this compensation, even though their parents have only paid a nominal fee for them to travel. This may seem like a great victory for passengers, but does a 3 hour delay really warrant a free return ticket? Have you really been that greatly inconvenienced by sitting in the airport bar for a few extra hours?
In addition to the fixed sum, passengers are allowed to backdate their claims for several years. For example, passengers who bought their ticket in Finland are able to claim for up to 10 years. This means that passengers who had a 3 hour delay that didn’t inconvenience them that much, who never made a claim at the time, and which wasn’t covered by legislation in force at the time, can now demand a cash payment from the airline for something that happened a decade ago. As most airlines only keep flight records for 2 or 3 years, this creates a real problem. Should airlines have to pay compensation to a passenger who they can’t prove was ever on the flight?
Hand in hand with the recent media coverage, airlines have experienced a huge spike in the amount of passengers making claims. Not only does this mean that airlines are now forced to set aside millions of pounds in order to pay this compensation, but it also means they are spending more on their customer care departments that may be drowning in the unprecedented volume of claims.
You might not care about the implications for airlines, but this can only be bad for passengers too in the long run. If airlines have to factor in the possibility of paying up to EUR600 in compensation per passenger, tickets prices are only going to increase. Perhaps in the future you wont be able to get a last minute cheap deal, and low cost airlines may not be so low cost. What’s worse, this could potentially force airlines in to operating flights that possibly should have been cancelled, for fear of paying out huge sums in compensation.
I personally believe that airlines should have the freedom and authority to delay or cancel flights if it is necessary for the safety and well-being of its crew and passengers. I do not for one minute condone airlines cancelling flights because it is not in their financial interest to run them. My argument is it that safety is, and should always be, the number one priority. As such, airlines should not be penalised for delaying their flight until a technical fault has been properly fixed or until the weather has improved enough to ensure safe passage through the airspace.
I have been lucky never to have been in a situation that would entitle me to compensation. But if I was, I am not sure whether my conscience would allow me to make a claim.
I am not suggesting that everyone should wave their right to compensation, far from it. All I ask is that you take the time to learn about this complex topic before making claims about something you only partially understand.