Brussels, 08/10/2012 (Agence Europe) - Airline passengers refused boarding because of airline problems, such as the delay of a connecting flight or reorganising a flight following an airport strike, must be compensated. The compensation of passengers will effectively be granted in situations occurring due to operational problems and not only those involving overbooking.
This is the gist of two separate rulings (C-321/11 and C-22/11) made by the European Court of Justice on Thursday 4 October. They were made in response to Spanish and Finnish court requests for an interpretation of the notion of “denied boarding” contained in Regulation 261/2004 on common rules for compensation and assistance to passengers in the event of denied boarding and of cancellation or long delay of flights.
In the first case, two passengers went to court in Spain. They had bought their tickets for a two journey flight from Iberia Airlines. They were refused boarding for their connecting flight because the first flight had been delayed and the airline in the meantime had cancelled their boarding cards and had reallocated their seats for the second flight because they thought that the two passengers would not make their connecting flight. In the second case, a passenger went to a Finnish court because the Finnair airline had refused boarding on a Barcelona-Helsinki flight on 30 July 2006 due to the reorganisation of flights following a strike at Barcelona airport two days previously: the interested party had to take a special night flight without compensation for the delay suffered because the company had given his seat to passengers from previous flights, which had been cancelled following the strike. In both cases, the passengers considered that boarding had been refused without any valid reason.
The Trade Tribunal of Coruna in Spain therefore asked the ECJ whether the notion of “denied boarding” exclusively includes situations in which flights have been overbooked or whether this notion can be extended to other situations. The Supreme Finnish Court also called on the ECJ to interpret he notion of “refused boarding”, particularly whether the airline can use exceptional circumstances to refuse boarding for flights prior to the one that has been cancelled due to the circumstances or to exonerate themselves from compensating passengers that have been subject to such a refusal.
In both cases, the ECJ explains that the notion of “refused boarding” includes overbooking but also other situations, particularly operational (such as the case of a delay in the first flight and the reorganisation of flights following a strike). This interpretation not only results from the wording of the regulation (see above) but also from the objective it pursues, namely guaranteeing a high level of passenger protection. Restricting the notion of “refused boarding” exclusively to cases of overbooking would considerably reduce passenger protection, explains the ECJ, by denying them any prediction, even if they find themselves in a situation that, following an overbooking, is not their fault, which would be contrary to the objective pursued in the regulation.
Although refused boarding can be justified, according to the regulation, for health reasons, safety or failure to provide appropriate travel documents, in the two cases in point, the reason for refusing boarding was not the fault of the passenger but that of the airline.
In the Spanish case, the airline was the reason why the first flight was delayed and for which it was responsible itself. It incorrectly considered that the passengers would not be able to arrive for the following flight's boarding and it is the airline that sold the tickets for the successive flights for which transfer time proved insufficient. Similarly, in the Finnish case, special circumstances occurred (a strike) but these cannot be used to justify the refusal of boarding for a passenger on a successive flight or exonerate the airline from its obligation to compensate the passenger. According to the ECJ, “exceptional circumstances” (such as a strike) under the terms of the regulation can exonerate the carrier from paying compensation but only for a precise flight and precise day, which was not the case in point where boarding was denied due to the carrier's reorganisation of flights, following exceptional circumstances affecting a previous flight.
The ECJ pointed out that in the latter case, airlines can request damages from anyone, including a third party that has been responsible for the denied boarding and that damages can mitigate or indeed erase the financial charge borne by the airline. (FG/trans.fl)