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A friend was booked for berlin-newark-houston-mexico city..return…paid for by work.
At Berlin they were delayed for 7 hrs, including being disembarked, after a fault with the wing which they could not fix.
They have promised to rebook him ona flight for next day.
Given that his work paid for the trip, does he personally have any recourse to compensation, wether points or cash?
TIA
Yes looks pretty open and shut EU261 compensation. Technical faults are not exceptional circs / not beyond the control of the airline so full 600 euros as the whole end to end continuous journey counts as the journey not just the first flight that went tech. Assuming all on one ticket.
Given the newer more refined trends in airline lying though, they might try 6hrs 59mins delay due to air traffic control and 1 minute due to their own aircraft tech issue or crew going out of hours… seriously though I can’t see how they could refuse compensation part of EU261.
And regardless of cause, operating airline is responsible for duty of care : hotel, transport to and from hotel, all meals at reasonable local rates (unless his home location is where the flight was cancelled) till his replacement flights.
If his employer doesn’t want him to travel anymore then his ticket can be refunded to them if they chose not to reroute(now or on a later date of their choice) even if it was sold as a nonrefundable ticket.
Germany in particular may have employment contracts that could give any compo or frequent flyer benefits to the employer not the traveller. Generally though, the traveller keeps in most places. I’d advise him to check his contract, company guidelines etc – and just to be safe personally I’d ask my boss (not HR unless told to) and note the answer.
PS He should also watch out and make sure that he’s not downgraded on the reroute to Economy if he was in a better class. Business to Economy in theory yields a 75% reimbursenent claimable but only on the piece of the journey that was downgraded and it may be less than you’d think depending on fare construction plus this is an arduous journey.
So I’d really try to resist downgrade even though technically they can do this to you as on that journey the compo may not turn out to be worth it – plus the same answer to the employer question on that too.
Many corporate travel agents pick up these delays automatically and make compensation claims on behalf of the traveller and the company will likely have a policy as to who gets to keep any compensation paid.
If it is a corporate ticket they should be able to manage the rerouting rather than relying on the airline – though United self service is usually quite effective on this front. I would have thought though that the opportunity could be taken to optimise the routing – ideally avoiding a US transit.
Thank you all..have fed back the advice to them.
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