TLV-CRL Ryanair nightmare experience – EU261 entitlement?

[ZACK]

I’ll be handling this case on behalf of a family member. Thought I would post on here to hear your thoughts before approaching Ryanair.

Back in March, said family member was scheduled to fly on Ryanair flight FR6747. At the time Israel was gripped by judicial reform protests and on that day there was an ATC strike at TLV airport (details of the strike at the time were murky, as it was spontaneous, illegal and only lasted a few hours – inbound flights were also landing during this time)
Upon arrival at the airport said pax asked the check-in agent if their flight was affected by the strike, to which they were assured it wasn’t.
At the gate they were notified of a “short” delay – which turned out to be not so short. They boarded more than 3 hrs later than scheduled. No reason for delay was given. Pilot announced they’d be taking off shortly but would need to make a stop in BLQ to change pilots as they’ll be reaching their legal flying limit. A while later they were notified the plane had some technical issues which they were working on resolving. At no point during this lengthy delay were they offered food or drink and were made to sit on a stifling hot plane without aircon, to the point where medics were called as a passenger had fainted on board. Sure enough, they eventually had to deplane all pax as the pilots had reached their legal flying limit. Only at this point did they receive an email from Ryanair notifying them of the delay and offering a full refund (which was obviously useless, considering last minute pricing of alternate flights) or rescheduling to a Ryanair flight 4 days later. They refused to reschedule sooner with other airlines. Passengers were advised to retrieve their luggage, however, it took no less than 5 hours for their luggage to be delivered to the carrousel!

All in, said family member spent all day at the airport, going nowhere!

The following day, it was only by chance that a friend had notified them they saw a Ryanair flight to CRL on the departures board at TLV at which point they dashed to the airport to catch it. Ryanair never communicated to them that the flight had been rescheduled for the following day. Boarding was 1 hour late and that’s where the saga finally ended.

The question is what are my options? While there was obviously a strike at the airport, Ryanair never acknowledged the delay was related to it, and regardless they are certainly to blame for part of the delay and the way it was handled (and therefore unable to claim extraordinary circumstances).
Will it be a fight trying to claim EU compensation? Obviously I’ll be claiming for hotel and food expenses incurred but wanted your thoughts on how I should approach the compensation element and the complaint overall?

As always, any guidance/advice is much appreciated!

Zack

[yonasl]

Claim for compensation and see what they reply with.

It is on them to prove it was exceptional circumstances so if they say it was ask for more details. They may provide or not some so continue asking until they either give up or you are sure you won’t have a case against them.

[AJA]

I think Ryanair will fight the claim but I definitely think your relatives have a case for compensation for the delayed flight. I would not even mention the unscheduled and illegal strike as that had nothing to do with the eventual delay. I would just mention the pilots going out of hours after the technical issue was discovered which resulted in the flight being rescheduled to the following day. I would also definitely claim for hotel and meals.

[NorthernLass]

I can also see Ryanair trying to wriggle out of this – make sure your family member has some comprehensive notes on what was said about the technical issues, when, and by whom, if they didn’t do it at the time. I’m sure that doing this was what won me my CEDR case a few years ago when broken air con onboard caused us to arrive back 5 hours late from NYC – BA tried to say that the issue was JFK’s failure to supply an airbridge (rubbish).

[davefl]

Fill in the online claim form, the hardest part is getting the form to accept your BIC/IBAN numbers for a UK bank, especially if it’s Lloyds. Google for solutions.

I had a claim last year, didn’t even give a reason, just that the flight arrival was more than 4 hours.

(due to overflying the runway at ACE and then having to fly to LPA, refuel and fly back to ACE. At no time were we allowed to deplane, or given even water by the crew).

For a cancellled flight like this I think it’s just a tickbox, you probably don’t need to cite reasons.

With mine they paid up without a fuss after about 8 weeks.

[Lady London]

AJA wrote:

I think Ryanair will fight the claim but I definitely think your relatives have a case for compensation for the delayed flight. I would not even mention the unscheduled and illegal strike as that had nothing to do with the eventual delay. I would just mention the pilots going out of hours after the technical issue was discovered which resulted in the flight being rescheduled to the following day. I would also definitely claim for hotel and meals.

I agree with AJA. What a terrible experience, again for commercial purposes and operational fault of Ryanair. Flying is stressful enough fot a lot of people and it’s shameful that Ryanair didn’t fulfil their duty of care and reroute their affected passengers decently.

I’d just add to AJA’s pointers, a suggestion to make separate claims for the duty of care items, and the compensation. You don’t want any potential attempts to lie and deny compensation – and reports are that airlines are trying to evade paying due compensation all too frequently – so do separately so that at least there’s a high chance duty of care costs will be reimbursed relatively promptly even if it turns out you’d have to fight for longer for your compensation.

Shame on Ryanair and thankyou to their pilot for his honesty in mentioning reasons that are such as to not exempt Ryanair from paying compensation.

[ZACK]

Lady London wrote:

I’d just add to AJA’s pointers, a suggestion to make separate claims for the duty of care items, and the compensation. You don’t want any potential attempts to lie and deny compensation – and reports are that airlines are trying to evade paying due compensation all too frequently – so do separately so that at least there’s a high chance duty of care costs will be reimbursed relatively promptly even if it turns out you’d have to fight for longer for your compensation.

As advised I filed a claim for duty of care first and Ryanair just got back to me approving my claim, no questions asked.
Will file a claim now for the compensation element and update this thread when I hear back!