US Airways compensates its passengers? Find out when you are eligible
It’s summer! Holiday season and travel par excellence, many of you leave by plane and this mode of transport is not immune to delays, cancellations or overbooking.
When this happens to us the sky falls on our heads, gets upset and promises to send a complaint to the airline but in the end… only 1% of passengers arrive until the end of the process to ask what is theirs of.
The fault is certainly the silence on these rights from the part of these same companies and the lack of publicity from the part of the European and national institutions.
A huge gift to airlines including US Airways (which are in the European regulations and the judgments of the Court of Justice of the EU being authoritative) for any delay greater than three hours, to give you compensation which ranges from 250 to 600 Euros depending on the distance traveled. (except in extraordinary circumstances such as strikes or bad weather).
And this does not stop at European borders because in addition to flights within Europe (the same rules apply to partisan or arriving flights from a non-European country operated by a European or non-European company such as US Airways.
The protection of air transport users is logically one of the essential aspects of Community policy for the defense of consumers. Regulation (EC) No 261/2004 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 February 2004, establishing common rules for the compensation and assistance of passengers in the event of denied boarding and of cancellation or delay important of a flight, impose obligations on air carriers to ensure a high level of protection for passengers.
Uncertainty about airline obligations to passengers in the event of delays “remains a source of significant conflict.
Since the concept of “flight delay” was not defined in Regulation No. 261/2004, the Court of Justice of the European Communities (CJEC) established a case law definition in the Sturgeon judgment: a delayed flight is a flight whose planned objective is respected.
The criterion of respecting the itinerary is the only one which, in the eyes of the ECJ, can be used to ensure a coherent distinction between the two definitions of delay and cancellation. A delayed flight can only be considered canceled if the air carrier provides passenger transport on another flight, the initial planning of which differs from that of the scheduled flight.
The ECJ finally took place in the Sturgeon judgment of 19 November 2009 that passengers on a delayed flight, having reached their final destination three hours or more after the scheduled arrival, can, like passengers on a canceled flight, request a lump sum compensation from the airline, unless the delay is due to extraordinary circumstances.
These circumstances are often improperly invoked by airlines, for example, US Airways may specify that a technical problem occurred on an aircraft does not constitute an extraordinary circumstance justifying a flight cancellation, unless this problem arises from events which, for example their nature or their origin are not inherent in the normal exercise of the activity of the air carrier concerned and escape effective control. The extraordinary circumstances must present the characters of exteriority and unpredictability corresponding to the criteria of force majeure in French law.
What compensation is provided for air passengers experiencing long delays?
The fixed compensation is:
– 250€ per passenger for a flight of up to 1,500 km,
– 400€ for a flight between 1,500 and 3,000 km and for all flights within the European Union of more than 1,500 km),
– 600 € for all other flights.
Regulation (EC) No 261/2004 of the European Parliament, the Sturgeon judgment and the Wallentin-Hermann judgment.
If at the moment you tell yourself that you would have liked to have had the information before the car, you have already experienced a delay of more than three hours, a cancellation or an overbooking, the last word n has not been said yet. You have indeed three years to collect your check and leave for a new destination.