Reply To: VS miles redemption with ANA first class CANCELLED

[StillintheSun]

@JDB As @meta says, there is no specified penalty for failure to advise a passenger of their rights, so once you have taken the refund, it’s all much harder (including persuading the airline) and to go and buy/fund expensive tickets (and correspondingly high court fee), then go to MCOL has a fair degree of risk. s75 is cost free but as a route to enforcing EU261 rights vs. Virgin is tricky, particularly when ANA is the operating carrier.

I agree with this and I would not buy any alternative tickets that I was not ultimately prepared to pay for myself. All litigation is risky and speaking generally law is good for lawyers, perhaps no so much for everyone else. However, we were initially dealing with the failure to inform of rights point and not the other potential issues that exist in successfully recovering damages from an airline.

The holy grail of English Tort law is that a tortfeasor should put a wronged party in the same position he would have been in the absence of any proven wrong. Thus my reasoning with regards to the failure to notify of rights is at least conceptually sound from first principles. Evidence as always is another matter. Moreover, there is no precedent in any of this and so it is all up for grabs!

My strong personal view is that no one should be paying out for flights that they cannot afford to ultimately pay for themselves but if you are willing to throw the dice there are plenty of decent arguments in favour of the consumer. There is much to knock about English law but generally a great many rights are granted to the individual vis-a-vis the State and/or the multi-national corporate. The problem is the ability to enforce the same. Personally, I hope as many people as possible sock it to BA. A little David vs Goliath is good for the soul.