October 21 2015: Myself and my wife have just won a legal battle against Easyjet, which we think might be significant step forward for consumer protection under the EU “denied boarding” regulations.
This issue has been a real hot potato, with airlines claiming the EU protection only applies to cases of overbooking. EU judgements last year extended that to much wider interpretation, including “other operational reasons” – but does that apply to missed flights due excessive queues at the airport?
On Monday 19th October 2015, the judgement of the Edinburgh Sherrif Court was announced: we were “denied boarding” due to excessive queue length for both bag drop and security, for an Easyjet flight from Sicily back home after our holiday in September 2014.
We think this ruling will be of interest to thousands of air passengers who have faced the same situation, but didn’t have any idea that the law was on their side.
It means that airlines cannot just abandon you if you miss the flight due to failures on their part to resource and manage their operations. Rather, that you are due a replacement flight, accommodation and meals, and monetary compensation.
Airlines cannot hide behind their Terms and Conditions to deny their responsibility. The protections are statutory and cannot be altered by contract.
We achieved this in the face of outright denial from their customer services, and then a concerted legal campaign to reject our rightful claim, including an attempt by them to move proceedings to London to their advantage, rather than our home town (and the location of their Scottish HQ) of Edinburgh. Of course Easyjet knew this would make it very difficult for us to prosecute the case, and we would most probably have given up had they been succesful. This seemed rather cynical to us, for a company that claims to be "Scotland's Largest Airline".
Luckily for us, it turns out that "Scotland's Largest Airline" is answerable to Scottish Law after all! Let's hope they never forget it.
This site exists to help other people in our situation to get the compensation which is lawfully due to them.
This issue has been a real hot potato, with airlines claiming the EU protection only applies to cases of overbooking. EU judgements last year extended that to much wider interpretation, including “other operational reasons” – but does that apply to missed flights due excessive queues at the airport?
On Monday 19th October 2015, the judgement of the Edinburgh Sherrif Court was announced: we were “denied boarding” due to excessive queue length for both bag drop and security, for an Easyjet flight from Sicily back home after our holiday in September 2014.
We think this ruling will be of interest to thousands of air passengers who have faced the same situation, but didn’t have any idea that the law was on their side.
It means that airlines cannot just abandon you if you miss the flight due to failures on their part to resource and manage their operations. Rather, that you are due a replacement flight, accommodation and meals, and monetary compensation.
Airlines cannot hide behind their Terms and Conditions to deny their responsibility. The protections are statutory and cannot be altered by contract.
We achieved this in the face of outright denial from their customer services, and then a concerted legal campaign to reject our rightful claim, including an attempt by them to move proceedings to London to their advantage, rather than our home town (and the location of their Scottish HQ) of Edinburgh. Of course Easyjet knew this would make it very difficult for us to prosecute the case, and we would most probably have given up had they been succesful. This seemed rather cynical to us, for a company that claims to be "Scotland's Largest Airline".
Luckily for us, it turns out that "Scotland's Largest Airline" is answerable to Scottish Law after all! Let's hope they never forget it.
This site exists to help other people in our situation to get the compensation which is lawfully due to them.