EU261 – UK Arbitration?

[LondonSpurs]

Hi, does anyone know whether I can file an EU261 arbitration claim with the UK authority for a KLM flight between Portugal and Netherlands that was cancelled 13 days prior to travel? KLM denied my complaint and claimed they cancelled it 15 days before, which is an outright lie and I have email proof. I’m a UK resident and would have bought the ticket while located in the UK. The ticket had 2 flights on it, LIS-AMS and then AMS-LHR a week later. It was the first portion they cancelled. They’ve got all our money for both flights despite the fact we only took the second flight and made our own way with TAP from LIS to AMS. There was a whole other mess regarding the second flight which I won’t go into here.

[JDB]

@LondonSpurs – you can take your complaint to AviationADR; there should be no issue that it relates to EC261 rather than UK261, something which is problematic at MCOL.

It’s not clear from your post exactly what you are claiming, although hopefully you were clear with KLM. Are you claiming 1) compensation for the cancellation and then 2) the higher of either a refund of the LIS-AMS flight or cost of the replacement tickets.

My inclination would be to go back to KLM, notably in respect of the differing evidence of the cancellation being notified 15 days ahead or 13 days, pointing out to them that per Article 5.1(c)(i) you are entitled to compensation unless you were notified two weeks before the flight, with ‘notified’ being the operative word, rather than when KLM may have cancelled the flight. Tell them that this is an indisputable fact per time stamp on the cancellation email.

KLM does have a get out if they can cite ‘extraordinary circumstances’ but that’s unlikely so far ahead. Additionally, what rerouting did they offer? They are allowed to do that within a -2hr/+4hr window, so this matters. Also, did you ask for a refund at the time.

[LondonSpurs]

Thanks very much for this. Yes, I claimed from KLM 1) EC261 compensation and 2) the cost of the replacement TAP flight we took instead (since in the end KLM never refunded us for the original flight and the TAP replacement was slightly more expensive, both in the same class of travel). I should have said that we opted for a TAP flight as KLM’s suggested alternative left 7 hours later than the original booking and was unsuitable for someone travelling with small children, where the TAP flight left at roughly the same time as the cancelled flight.

I didn’t go into this earlier as it’s complicated, but we took the cancellation over the 7 hour delayed re-route. But since we had 2 flights on the booking (won’t do that again) the website would only let you cancel both and by that point AMS-LHR prices for Flight 2 were much much more expensive. So I called and an agent cancelled flight 1 manually, kept flight 2 and I got an email confirming the same, with a refund for the first flight. All good, I thought. Three days before Flight 2 I go to manage my booking and there is zero record of booking confirmation. Their systems had cancelled our tickets on flight 2, though not told us – all I had was confirmation we were on the flight, yet we weren’t. They’d refunded us both flights minus bags and seat selection. 4 phone calls and 7 hours on the phone later, we were back on Flight 2. Had to argue with them about not charging me the market value of the flights that day given it was much more expensive and they admitted on the phone that the cancellation of our tickets on flight 2 was their fault. The only way to get the booking back was apparently to take the entire fee for the original booking (2 flights) again, even though we were flying on one flight only, and then we should submit a compensation claim for the first part, they said. Which we did, but they denied everything, both EC261 and that we were entitled to any refund at all despite the fact we paid for two flights with them and got one.

This is the first time I’ve ever flown with KLM. They’ve made quite the impression.