In a ruling handed down on Wednesday 4 March (case T-656/24), the General Court of the European Union ruled that an airline cannot rely on an extraordinary circumstance affecting a previous flight if the delay to the subsequent flight is due to an autonomous decision taken by the airline.
In Germany, two airline passengers are claiming compensation from European Air Charter for a delay of more than three hours to their flight from Düsseldorf to Varna. The company argued that it had decided to wait for the passengers on a previous flight, who had been delayed due to a general failure of the security control at Cologne-Bonn airport, and to reorganise the flight in question for all the passengers on a replacement aircraft.
Interpreting Regulation (EC) No 261/2004, which governs compensation for passengers in the event of cancellation or long delay of a flight, the Court held that the charter company could not rely on an extraordinary circumstance which affected an earlier flight if the delay of the subsequent flight is caused by an autonomous decision taken by the airline, provided that decision is the determining cause of that delay. This decision should not have been binding on the air carrier in the light of a legal obligation, which it is up to the German courts to verify.
In the absence of details in the European regulation on the direct nature of the causal link between the extraordinary circumstance and the flight delay, the Court referred to the criteria applicable to non-contractual liability in the EU. These criteria require the link to be sufficiently direct, so that the conduct complained of must be the determining cause of the damage.
In addition, the European judge ruled that the airline could not rely on the interest of passengers on the previous flight in being transported within a reasonable time. In his view, it is not up to European Air Charter to balance the interests of the different groups of passengers concerned.
To see the Court’s judgment: https://aeur.eu/f/l01 (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)