Ryanair canceled your flight? what are your rights?
The 2,000 flights canceled by Ryanair affair is an opportunity to give a reminder of your rights in the event of cancellation but also to delay or deny boarding! How to recover the compensation to which you are entitled?
Ryanair has released a list of all of its canceled flights until Thursday, October 28. A total of 294 flights are involved from or to Belgium. The company will delete 204 to or from Charleroi and 90 to or from Brussels Airport.
Are you one of 55,500 passengers affected by these massive cancellations? Or have you just had other problems with
Rynair or any other airline? Here is a little reminder of your rights
Ditto for lost or damaged baggage: react. And if necessary, insist on redress.
Haven’t given up the plane yet to go on vacation? The FRC can only advise you to refresh your knowledge of passenger rights before packing your bags. During major departures, and taking into account the overcrowding of airspace and the tight cadences of flights, the risks of having yours canceled or delayed are very present.
All of your rights are shown below. Although not all scenarios can be discussed, they give a good overview of what you can claim depending on the situation in which you find yourself. The rights indicated emanate from European Regulation N ° 261/2004 and the Montreal Convention.
The European regulations apply to all flights departing from Switzerland, but not necessarily to those returning if the carrier and the airport of departure for the second trip are not European. Thus, the outward journey from Geneva to Djerba with Tunisair is governed by European regulations, not the return flight. For it to be subject, the carrier would have to be Swiss or European.
In the event of a problem with a stopover, the scope of the rights changes depending on whether you have booked the entire journey during the same reservation or whether the flights were purchased separately. In the second case, only the route subject to delay or cancellation will be taken into account.
Your rights will be increased if you have booked at least two services through an agency (flight and accommodation, for example), because the Package Travel Act applies. These regulations oblige the agency or the organizer to assist you or to offer, as far as possible, an alternative solution.
A ticket, but no place on board
Denied boarding, also known as overbooking, is also a risk covered by European regulations. In the absence of volunteers agreeing to renounce their reservation in exchange for compensation, the carrier may refuse boarding to passengers against their will, even if they have a valid ticket. In this case, compensation similar to that for the cancellation of a flight is due, as well as the other assistance rights.
Assistance and customer service
You are at the airport and it turns out that your flight has a problem? While you are waiting, Ryanair has a duty to provide assistance. And this support depends on the distance of the flight and the duration of the delay. However, regardless of the case, you are entitled to receive food and beverage from the company. You also have the right to make calls, send emails and use the fax. If your flight is rejected for the next day, the company must cover the costs of your hotel stay and transportation. If the company does not provide this kind of assistance and you are responsible for the expenses, you must be reimbursed. Keep your receipts and invoices well. Without these, you will not be able to make a complaint to the Irish company at the appropriate time.
How to obtain Ryanair compensation?
Passenger rights are not limited to this assistance. If your flight is more than 3 hours late, you will be compensated for delayed flight. You can claim Compensation when the flight has been canceled or when Ryanair is unable to board you due to overbooking.
Other information, you can claim your compensation up to five years after the date of the flight. Also, companies have a deadline to notify you of a cancellation. And you can only claim compensation if the deadline is not met. Indeed, the law requires that you be notified of the cancellation at least 14 days before your flight. This is reasonable enough to allow airlines to maintain flexibility and passengers to organize themselves.
What is the amount of my compensation in the event of a delayed flight?
According to Regulation (EC) n ° 261/2004 of February 11, 2004, this fixed compensation can go up to € 600 per person and it depends on the distance of your flight:
– For a flight delayed by three hours or more, for which the total flight distance traveled at 1500 km, compensation is 250 euros;
– For a flight between three and four hours late, compensation is 300 euros;
– For a flight delayed by three hours or more, the total distance traveled between 1500 km and 3500 km (or more than 1500 km within the EU) is 450 euros;
– For a flight delayed more than four hours, the total distance flown is greater than 3500 km (or for a flight between an EU and non-EU airport), the compensation is 600 euros.
And that’s not all, if your flight is delayed by five hours or more (your flight canceled or overbooked), your operator must legally tell you:
– Refund the full price of the flight,
– Refund the full price of all flights that you did not make on the same reservation,
– Offer repatriation on a return flight to your point of departure (your first airport of origin).
Are there any cases where a claim is denied?
It may happen that you are the victim of an overbooking, cancellation or flight delay without being able to benefit from compensation. The first case has already been mentioned above. If, for example, Ryanair faces a strike and manages to notify you at least 14 days before your flight is postponed or postponed, then you are no longer eligible for financial compensation. You can no longer ask him for compensation. The same applies if the company succeeds in proving that it was unable to anticipate the fact that its personnel went on strike on the day of your flight. Something that it would be difficult for him to prove in practice.
The company may also not pay you compensation if it was an extraordinary circumstance in which its responsibilities are not engaged. Understand by “extraordinary circumstance”, a phenomenon beyond the scope of the company’s fields of action. For example, the flight experienced disruptions due to weather conditions including a storm, a health problem for flight personnel or a passenger, a strike by air traffic controllers. All these cases mean that you may not benefit from your compensation.
Flight compensation delayed, canceled or overbooked: How to assert your rights?
In the majority of cases, many disgruntled passengers usually start by calling the Irish company’s customer service. The latter who will obviously serve them as false justifications so as not to pay what he owes. If you are lucky, they will offer you a commercial gesture which will undoubtedly be lower than the compensation when it is a serious breach for which you should obtain compensation. Others choose to initiate the solo process by sending a simple registered letter with acknowledgment of receipt to the company. But be sure that the process will be long and may even end in failure, because the company will watch for any loophole in your file to invalidate your compensation. For this, the best solution to simplify your life is to seek the help of a specialized agency like Indemniflight.
This one has all the skills to settle a complaint following a canceled or delayed flight. The organizations that deal with these problems carry out all administrative and legal procedures without taking a single penny. The only thing that you will have to do will be to constitute the file and to deposit it on their site. Once the claim has borne fruit, a certain percentage will be deducted from the compensation received.
Tips to follow to optimize your chances of getting your compensation
We offer advice to ensure that your delay claim is a success.
– Keep a copy of the documents
It is essential to preserve certain documents. Those are :
– Ryanair flight documents such as boarding pass, booking confirmation, electronic ticket, delay certificate, etc,
– Receipts for the expenses you paid yourself (taxi, meal, drinks, etc.),
– Save, record your flight data.
These include the flight number (begins with “HV”), flight times (scheduled arrival and departure time) and the duration of the delay (departure and final arrival time).
– Find out the reason for the delay or cancellation of your flight
To do this, you can ask your company’s personnel. You can also check the weather conditions. To be sure of the information, also check if other flights have been delayed.
– Check your flight and the amount of compensation with an online calculator
You only have to write your flight number and date in the dedicated boxes to see the amount of compensation you may have.
All these elements will allow you to constitute a Ryanair claim file for due delay.
What are my rights in the event of cancellation?
The answer to this question depends on the date of your flight.
– You are notified more than two weeks before departure :, the airline company is obliged to offer you an alternative, in accordance with European Regulation (EC) 261/2004. If you refuse, the company must reimburse the price of your ticket.
– You are notified between two weeks and 7 days before departure: the obligations are the same as in the previous point, but you will be entitled to compensation, “unless the airline offers an alternative flight which leaves no more than 2 hours before the scheduled time and which arrives at most 4 hours after the scheduled arrival time “, as explained by Test-Achats.
– You are notified less than 7 days before departure: you have the same rights as in the previous two points. That is to say, to refuse the alternative offered (and to be reimbursed for the ticket) and to claim in addition financial compensation. Unless the airline offers an alternative flight which leaves at most 1 hour before the scheduled time and which arrives at most 2 hours after the scheduled arrival time.
Please note that compensation may be refused if an airline is able to prove that the cancellation of a flight is due to exceptional circumstances (such as incompatible weather conditions, a strike, security reasons or failure problems or delay in air traffic management). Of course, this is not the case for the 2,000 Ryanair flights canceled until the end of October.
How much is the financial compensation?
Its amount depends on the distance of the flight, namely:
– 250 euros for flights of less than 1,500km;
– 400 euros for flights up to 3,500 km;
– 600 euros for those who exceed 3,500 km.
“Passengers can also demand additional compensation if they have suffered particular damage and can prove it as a missed connection,” adds Test-Achats.
Furthermore, the cancellation of a flight is not the only situation giving rise to the right to financial compensation. This is also the case for denied boarding on a flight, delay of more than 3 hours (and provided that no extraordinary circumstance occurs) as well as downgrading.
In the latter case, the carrier must reimburse the passenger: 30% of the ticket price for flights of less than 1,500 km; 50% between 1,500 and 3,500 km and 75% beyond 3,500 km.
Please note that this policy only applies to passengers traveling from a European airport or traveling via a European airline.
How to obtain this compensation?
The compensation to which European passengers are entitled is far from automatic.
Each year, 3 billion euros are not claimed in Europe, “says Claim It, a legal office that assists passengers in their requests for financial compensation in the event of long delays.
So here’s a quick guide to make sure you get at least some or all of your money back.
The injured passenger must first address his complaint to the airline’s customer service. For this purpose, he can use this complaint form, the EU261. This form is in principle also available online on the website of each airline. In the case of Ryanair.
Following numerous claims filed by the victim, the airline may maintain its position, it is up to passengers who wish to persist in their compensation claims to seize the competent court to resolve the dispute.
That said, the court is not a panacea. Injured passengers who want to avoid this approach can therefore call on the services of firms specializing in the handling of conflicts and disputes resulting from the various types of damage caused by air carriers, including Ryanair, caused by the long delays of their aircraft.
If no compensation is released, you pay nothing. Otherwise, you will only receive 75% of the amount collected (450 euros if the compensation to be collected amounts to 600 euros) … which is always better than nothing.