The shortage of airport staff for loading baggage, which caused a flight to be delayed by more than 3 hours, may constitute an ‘extraordinary circumstance’ under European Union law, ruled the Court of Justice of the EU in a judgment delivered on Thursday 16 May (case C-405/23).
In Germany, the company Flightright is seeking compensation on behalf of passengers who were affected by the long delay to their flight from Cologne to the island of Kos operated by Touristic Aviation Services (TAS). The latter is of the opinion that the insufficient number of the airport operator’s staff responsible for loading baggage onto aircraft may constitute an ‘extraordinary circumstance’ under Regulation (EC) No 261/2004 governing compensation and assistance to air passengers in the event of long delays of flights.
In its ruling, the Court found in favour of the airline. According to the Court, two conditions must be met to establish the existence of an ‘extraordinary circumstance’: - the event is not, by its nature or origin, inherent in the normal exercise of the activity of the airline company; - it is beyond its actual control.
It is for the German court to assess whether these two conditions are satisfied. The court must, first, determine whether the failures observed in the baggage loading operations were general failures. If that were the case, those failures would not be capable of constituting an event which is inherent in the normal exercise of the activity of the airline company. Secondly, the German court must determine whether those failures were beyond TAS’s control. That would not be the case if TAS was able to exercise effective control over the airport operator.
Even if the German court were to find that the staff shortage at issue constitutes an ‘extraordinary circumstance’ within the meaning of EU law, TAS will, in order to be exempted from its obligation to pay compensation to passengers, also have to show that this circumstance could not have been avoided even if all reasonable measures had been taken, and that it adopted all measures appropriate to the situation to remedy the consequences stemming from it.
See the judgment of the Court of Justice: https://aeur.eu/f/c8r (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)