While the Westminster Village is fixated by the Telegraph-hyped furore that Lib Dem ministers don’t always agree with every aspect of Coalition policy (shock, horror etc), the rest of the country is focused on a British obsession bigger even than the media’s predeliction for attaching the suffix ‘-gate’ to a noun: the weather.
Newspaper and TV pictures have been dominated by images of those hoping for a holiday getaway having their hopes dashed and their tempers frayed by the endless queues and chaos at Heathrow and for the Eurostar. Hundreds of thousands of people who had hoped for family reunions or dream holidays now find their plans in tatters. If there’s a part of the year that’s pretty time-critical it’s Christmas — somehow arriving after the festivities misses the point.
There is at least one consolation, and it’s courtesy of the European Union, specifically Regulation 261/2004. I doubt you’ll hear the right-wing media mention it — though you can be sure they’d condemn the EU if it didn’t exist.
Regulation 261/2004 (passed on 11 February, 2004) “established common rules on compensation and assistance to passengers in the event of denied boarding, cancellation, long delay of flights”. Though the severity of this past week’s weather almost certainly means that passengers will not be entitled to the normal EU compensation available for cancelled flights, it does offer considerable consumer reassurance — for example, a guarantee backed by legislation that the airline must offer passengers the choice of a refund for the parts of the ticket they’ve not used, or an alternative route or travelling on a later date.
The legislation also legally obliges airlines — regardless of the reasons for cancellation — to offer assistance to passengers affected by cancelled flights at the airport, including meals and refreshments in reasonable relation to the amount of time they are delayed; two free telephone calls or emails; and overnight hotel accommodation and transfers.
Of course, even if your flight isn’t covered by EU legislation you still have a contract (ie, your ticket) with the airline to get you from A to B. The airline should — if it is following the International Air Transport Association’s ‘Recommended Practice on General Conditions of Carriage’ — offer you the choice of a later flight, an agreed alternative mode of transport or a refund. Most airlines do, but they are not legally obliged to do so. And certainly there is no right to assistance, or to compensation in the event of cancellation owing to non-exceptional circumstances.
So there you have it — a real-life example of the EU offering consumer protection of value to its citizens. Just don’t expact the right-wing media to mention it.
Plebble.com has some very useful information on consumer rights here, and a template letter to airlines to request a refund and/or compensation here.
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Margaret
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Tom Arms
7 Comments
So why, pray, does it require a regulation? Oh yes, to protect worse airlines from competition from better ones who would likely offer such anyway. Betcha if you follow the money, the passenger is paying anyway for this “security”.
@Jock
How is obliging worse airlines to recompensate their customers in any way protecting them from competition? What I see is consumer rights being maintained and I’m under no doubt that this is exactly the kind of thing which would never become a standard level of service were it not legislated for.
Have you ever flown RyanAir? I think it’s safe to say that you have to be pretty damn terrible to lose out on the airline market because of poor customer service if your airline is also cheap.
We do not need the EU to impose these sort of rules upon us. In some things we will be ahead of other countries and in other things we will be behind. Is this interference by the EU really worth the billions the EU costs us? No. We should leave the EU, the CAP and the CFP as soon as possible.
I would be interested to know whether the weather we have had, constitutes extraordinary circumstances that could not have been avoided by any reasonable measure.
Jim
All the sensible consumer legislation comes from the EU. The London government and civil service just can’t be bothered with it at all.
DunKhan, compulsory insurance always disadvantages the responsible and advantages the irresponsible. I see no reason why this needs to be a state mandated thing. In a free market companies that served their customers badly would find they either had no customers or were so cheap that people would not mind if their twenty four quid return trip to Bratislava was cancelled because it was so cheap.
Does this legislation mean that when the county fails to make my local roads safe for travelling on I can claim a refund from them? Hmmm…thought not.
There is at least one consolation, and it’s courtesy of the European Union, specifically Regulation 261/2004.
If we want a regulation, our own government can write it. If we want NOT to have a regulation, or would prefer a different regulation, we gain nothing from having the EU force its ideas on us.