Mechanical Ruling

From BoingBoing:
"European court orders airlines to pay compensation for delays from mechanical failures"

 

For years, airlines operating in Europe have had to pay compensation to delayed passengers, unless the delay was an "extraordinary circumstance." Airlines have characterized mechanical failures as extraordinary circumstances, and refused to pay out when their planes weren't working properly.   But last week, the European Court of Justice ruled against Dutch airline KLM in a case over compensation for mechanical failures. This has opened the gates to claims against all of Europe's airlines, from thousands of passengers who've faced delays due to mechanical failures.  Especially vulnerable are the low-cost airlines like Ryanair, who have made it a policy to abuse and ridicule passengers ("You're not getting a refund so fuck off. We don't want to hear your sob stories. What part of 'no refund' don't you understand?" -Ryanair CEO Michael O'Leary) who seek compensation for delays. However, the battle is far from over. Since the supreme court verdict, thousands of people who have tried to lodge a claim have been fobbed off by airlines. This week, Britain’s aviation regulator, the Civil Aviation Authority, began enforcement action against Ryanair to make the budget airline pay compensation to thousands of delayed passengers in the wake of the European court judgment.  Londoner Alan Macdonald was delayed eight hours when his Ryanair flight from Malta to London was grounded. Check-in staff and the captain blamed a technical fault, but when passengers tried to claim, Ryanair mysteriously changed its story. “Adverse weather conditions” were suddenly the cause and, since these counted as “extraordinary circumstances” beyond the airline’s control, it insisted compensation was not payable.  “It was only in a letter sent a month after my claim that weather was mentioned,” Macdonald says. “In their initial email to passengers, they declared the delay as being due to unspecified ‘exceptional circumstances’ and provided a link to an out-of-date list of such circumstances, including those that have been declared null in UK courts. This led other passengers to think they have no scope to claim.”

 

 

^ Finally, some government organization is siding with the passengers rather than the airlines. I know this only applies to the EU, but hopefully it is a first-step and other countries (like Canada, the US, etc) will soon follow suit. I have had to deal with "mechanical problems" before both in the US as well as in the EU. For years the airlines have been allowed to treat their passengers as cattle while at the same time loosing their baggage, charging them for food, blankets, baggage, etc. They have also been allowed to over-book their flights and bump people off. They have been already to keep passengers on-board the plane, but still on the ground for hours. They have also been allowed to blame everything on mechanical problems and get away with not compensating the passengers. It is the airlines' responsibility to ensure that their crews, flight attendants, captains and planes are all in place and in working order and if one of those isn't and results in a delay then of course the passengers should get something for all their trouble. The only true delay is weather-related. Everything else is man-made and so the passengers affected should be compensated. The key thing now is to see if the EU actually keeps up with the airlines or if this is merely a PR stunt. ^

http://boingboing.net/2015/09/19/european-court-orders-airlines.html?utm_content=buffer18ee6&utm_