EC261 compensation – advice sought to challenge “Extraordinary circumstances”
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Hi flyers
I appreciate this post is fairly long however I would like to give the context behind my 2 specific questions below.
Our flight EZY8037 London Gatwick LGW – Tenerife South TFS on Saturday 8th July was scheduled to depart at 1635.
The flight was delayed several times and eventually cancelled. We were given a small leaflet and advised to go onto manage booking on the app to see our options.
We have been successful claiming most expenses (including a new flight with BA from Heathrow on Sunday 9th July), except the pre-booked taxi transfer from TFS to the hotel.
In response to my recent query to easyJet re: EC261 compensation eligibility, their reply is below. Where easyJet mention “widespread thunderstorms across much of United Kingdom” this is the first time I have heard this reason so far.
At the gate we were all told the flight crew had exceeded their duty hours and a standby crew was being sourced. The flight cancellation email stated reasons beyond their control and extraordinary circumstances but did not state specific reason/s. After returning to the UK I went onto easyJet’s online chat and pressed them for a specific reason/s, they checked the ‘disruption report’ and eventually said “air traffic restrictions”.
I know I can request a Subject Access Request (SAR) per my rights as detailed by the Information Commissioner’s Office in order to request a METAR (Meteorological Aerodrome Report), more detailed weather charts for that day for the route (low and high enroute weather) and NOTAM (Notice to Aviation). This would be good evidence for me re: “widespread thunderstorms”.
I understand that numerous non-easyJet flights departed that day successfully to numerous destinations including Tenerife, Lanzarote, Fuerteventura and Gran Canaria. I may be able to prove this by taking numerous screenshots from http://www.flightradar24.com for relevant flights from non-easyJet airlines that day/time.
Our flight path to Tenerife typically would over fly the north west corners of France and Portugal only, the rest of the flight being over the sea and avoiding Ukrainian airspace completely.
My questions are as follows and I would really appreciate your advice, especially from a legal perspective:
a) Assuming the below is easyJet’s ‘final’ response on EC261 compensation, do you recommend I proceed to reject their explanations, appeal and then request the SAR/METAR/NOTAM for 8th July?
b) Do you have any other suggestions re: course of action to pursue EC261 e.g. ADR, MCOL, CAA, ABTA, etc? I know that the onus is on easyJet to prove the “extraordinary circumstances” they are claiming and “extraordinary circumstances” does appear for numerous flight cancellations looking at various groups/comments e.g. on Facebook. Our flight might even have been one of the 1,700 cancelled flights they decided to cancel as part of their July, August and September cancellations.
easyJet’s reply:
Thank you for contacting easyJet.
This is in regard to the update of the compensation on booking: XXXXXXX
I apologize for the disruption to your flight and understand that your travel plans were greatly affected. We always try to ensure that passengers reach their destinations safely, securely & on time.
On this occasion, we had no other alternative but to cancel your flight.
After careful consideration and a thorough review of your case, we are sorry to inform you that the reason for the disruption of your flight does not qualify for compensation.
Compensation eligibility is determined by various factors, including the circumstances surrounding the disruption and the relevant regulations.
The primary reason for the disruption to your flight was outside easyJet’s control and below is the assessment of your claim:
‘To further explain what happened on the day; widespread thunderstorms across much of United Kingdom, particularly in southern parts of the UK, caused air traffic control restrictions which substantially regulated the air space. This resulted in long delays to flights as aircraft waited for air space ‘slots’ to operate, sometimes for several hours. These delays caused crew to run out of their legal hours to operate and also pushed flights into night curfews at numerous airports. This widespread disruption unfortunately impacted your flight, and we had no option but to cancel it. We do take reasonable measures to avoid delays and cancellations to our flights by having replacement crews and spare aircraft available in our network. However, in the circumstances, Your flight was cancelled due to the disruption caused by weather conditions and air traffic control restrictions on the day.’
Unfortunately, in this situation, the disruption was caused by factors beyond our control, and we are unable to grant the requested compensation.
We thank you for your continuous support and understanding and look forward to welcoming you on-board soon.
Kind regards,
easyJet Resolution SupportCan you be bothered with Aviation ADR or MCOL?
or would you just like to forget about this?
“the pre-booked taxi transfer” – is that the only thing left that you want to claim for? Is it so expensive that you want to spend what could be significant time chasing this, with an unknown and potentially unfavourable outcome?
A subject access request is a request to see data held about you. METAR and NOTAM reports are not information about you personally; so would not be provided in response to your SAR. You might, depending how Easyjet store information, get all the metadata about your reservation, and find in amongst it some internal coding for the reason for your cancellation. But in terms of finding a smoking gun, I doubt a SAR will achieve that. Easyjet are under no obligation to create new info other than what is on file at the date of your SAR submission.
@captainbluesky, my advice would be to post EasyJet a LBA for your UK261 delay compensation, quote the correct section of the legislation and if they don’t pay you put in a MCOL claim, at that stage they’ll have to either provide the court the evidence or pay you, I suspect you’ll be paid at that stage.
Good luck@captainbluesky, my advice would be to post EasyJet a LBA for your UK261 delay compensation, quote the correct section of the legislation and if they don’t pay you put in a MCOL claim, at that stage they’ll have to either provide the court the evidence or pay you, I suspect you’ll be paid at that stage.
Good luckThat didn’t happen in my case with easyJet. It isn’t as straightforward as you perceive.
Anything can happen with MCOL.@captainbluesky it is indeed a very long post, but the answer is very short. If you want to claim cancellation compensation after EasyJet’s refusal, you need to escalate to AviationADR – Google that and follow the procedure; keep it factual, concise and measured. Be prepared to lose – there were lots of cancellations at LHR that day (see CAA list) and even more at LGW. The suggestion that you should write an LBA and/or go to MCOL is bad advice as you will have to pay fees when EasyJet may well have an absolute defence such that those fees will be lost.
I’m not sure who gave you the idea that a DSAR would yield all this information, but in any event neither METAR nor NOTAM (usually known as Notice to Airmen, not Aviation) would assist your claim in any way. There is no question that there was very severe weather on that day in the South of England and Northern Europe that restricted flow and led to cancellations and airlines are free to choose which flights to cancel to comply with restrictions. The potential routing of the flight is also irrelevant.
Thank you all for your replies. I will consider my options.
I used ADR recently to get a refund from EasyJet that they tried to avoid dealing with for 6 months! It was extremely simple and straightforward (even more so than CEDR IMO), and EasyJet paid up within 4 weeks.
Things like pre booked taxis, hotels and event tickets are consequential losses and not covered by EU/Uk261 regulation and airlines won’t reimburse these.
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