The Court of Justice of the EU ruled on Tuesday 21 December (joined cases C-146/20, C-188/20, C-196/20 and C-270/20, Azurair and others, in case C-263/20 Airhelp) that a flight brought forward by more than one hour by “the operating air carrier” must be considered cancelled.
Because in such a case, the Court explains in a statement, the flight being brought forward is “important in that it may give rise to serious inconvenience for passengers, in the same way as a delay”.
“In particular, the passenger may be forced to adapt significantly to the new departure time of his or her flight in order to be able to take it or even, despite having taken all the necessary precautions, not be able to board the plane”, the institution continues.
It states that an “operating air carrier” is any carrier operating a flight for which a boarding contract has been concluded between the passenger and a tour operator, without the air carrier having to confirm the flight times or the tour operator having made a specific reservation for the passenger.
The actual air carrier, it adds, cannot reduce the possible compensation to be paid by 50% on the grounds that it has, for example, offered the passenger a re-routing that would allow for an undelayed arrival at the destination.
The actual air carrier must always pay the full amount of compensation, the institution insists.
It also considers that a flight cannot be considered cancelled if the carrier has postponed its departure time by less than three hours without making any other changes to its flight.
The Court had been asked by German and Austrian regional courts to clarify some of the conditions under which air passengers can claim compensation under Regulation 261/2004. The two regional courts had themselves received several disputes between air passengers and the companies Airhelp and Flightright and the airlines Azurair, Corendon Airlines, Eurowings, Austrian Airlines and Laudamotion.
Other clarifications made by the Court on Tuesday regarding the conditions for access to compensation relate to elements such as confirmation of the reservation, proof of flight arrival time or information to the passenger.
As regards confirmation of the reservation - which the passenger must be able to prove in order to be compensated - the Court states, for example, that it becomes effective once a passenger is in possession of a ticket or once a travel organiser has sent the passenger proof containing a promise of carriage on “a particular flight, individualised by points of departure and destination, times of departure and arrival, and the flight number”.
The institution also considers that a passenger who has booked a flight via an intermediary should be considered not to have been informed of the cancellation of the flight if this information was not communicated to him or her in time by the intermediary in question.
To consult the judgment in full: https://bit.ly/3pd2nlT (Original version in French by Agathe Cherki)