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Comment by croemer | Hacker News Reader

For flights departing or arriving in the EU you get fairly nice compensation for significant delays (3+ hours) between 250 EUR (<1500km) and 600 EUR (>=1500km). Helps ensure incentives align beyond reputation.

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Unless they claim, by noreply email, that it (eg. ATC strike in a 3rd country for which they had 2 weeks' notice) was out of their control and so no compensation is owed.

Then you get the pleasure of a phone tree that only allows the option of giving feedback about the noise on the plane or the cleanliness.

Then once you get through and manage to plead your case you'll get quarterly emails about how your case is in review and sorry about the delay but you should have news next week.

Not bitter.

Although a pain, I've had great success by simply asking for "some form of compensation" for my delay. They're not going to offer you cash back, but you can then push them to give future flight credit. I've gotten $30-$150 on average depending on the value of the ticket purchased

Yea, they tend to deflect. Then you send email quoting laws and inform them that next email will be trough lawyers, and they pay out quick (personal experience)

In recent case I quoted the actual law & caselaw and the response I got was that I need to contact the marketing carrier and they will stop responding now. Funnily enough, the carrier I was in contact with was the marketing carrier (as background, codeshare flight was cancelled almost month earlier but I was never informed & I only discovered it when I went to airport).

So in my case the next step is to find lawyer.

Have you raised a complaint with the regulatory body they are registered to? That also works well.

NEB in Finland is Traficom, but they don't handle individual complaints. Those handled by Consumer Advisory Services and European Consumer Center & these are residence based as far as I understand (I'm Finnish citizen but I don't live in EU).

The only alternative to court is Consumer Disputes Board but their resolutions are just recommendations & Finnair has a long history of ignoring them so spending 2-3 years there seems like waste of time.

In my case, I filed a complaint with Iceland air regulatory authority, even though I lived in canada at a time, and when I told Icelandair I had done that, they suddenly became very proactive.

There are also firms that handle all of this for you for a % (in the region of 20%). They validate the claim and threaten ti take the airline to court if they don’t pay out.

I generally go direct to the airline these days but if I get pushback beyond what I’m willing to deal with myself, I’ll use one of those services.

Very common in Germany. Non-existant in Finland. Finnish consumer rights are very weak, they only work if the business cooperates[1]. Finnair is a state-owned company that acts like if they were legislation and courts themselves. I have avoided them as much as I can for many years.

[1] Probably the majority of businesses does. But shady used car dealers etc. and Finnair don't.

The law is clear though, if the airline doesn't comply, raise a complaint with the regulatory body of the country they are located. Suddenly they become very friendly (been there, done that, got all the monies)

If you have a working small claims court system in your country - go for that.

I literally had to sprint across LIS airport (past the tax-free refund counter I had business at) to make an alternate flight, after waiting in line for 3 hours.

If I didn't run, I would have missed the alternate, and Airfrance would have owed me like 700EUR plus an overnight stay with meals. I did them a favor. I requested reimbursement for my missed tax refund (which was <100EUR); some guy in India told me they weren't legally obligated to reimburse me, and closed the ticket.

Often only if you are prepared to go as far as CEDR/MCOL.

European airlines are not forthcoming with that compensation /at all/. They have entire teams, procedures, policies, strategies etc to avoid paying out

I will say I expected Ryanair to be more awkward about it but apart from a few discouraging messages on the claim form (“are you sure you’re entitled to compensation?” and “most claims aren’t successful” type stuff), once I did fill out the form they paid out quickly and without fuss, despite the payout being larger than the original fare

Fair enough. It's mostly the 'bigger' long-haul airlines I've seen complaints about. But I can also find anecdata about Ryanair too without much effort:

https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/ryanair/2195574-how-get-ryan...

https://www.reddit.com/r/LegalAdviceUK/comments/1lg6aqp/ryan...

https://www.reddit.com/r/LegalAdviceUK/comments/1d3908i/i_th...

https://www.reddit.com/r/LegalAdviceUK/comments/1lnjmvm/file...

https://www.reddit.com/r/LegalAdviceUK/comments/1o6muwv/ryan...

Every airline plays the game to some degree - it would be commercially incompetent to not use every possible angle to weasle out of it.

and “most claims aren’t successful”

The same is true of lottery tickets, yet that obviously hasn't stopped people from buying them.

Got compensations relatively easily out of both Wizzair and Ryanair and I loath bureaucracy.

Tell me about it. Swiss air refuses to pay out 1800€ in EC261 compensation…

They almost always try that. Save yourself the hassle, use one of the online services who will get that money for you.

Plenty of frequent flyers are willing to help for free too (I assume a majority of those services take a cut). FlyerTalk, Head For Points forums etc

How far have you taken it? Letter-before-action mentioning CEDR/MCOL? (The stage at which European airlines begin to consider stopping their blanket "no" response)

Switzerland might have options for small claims court claims online too

Happened to me with Alitalia once, they changed their stance immediately when I put the local office of civil aviation on Cc: and the money was soon in my bank account.

This is the trick. The CC'd address doesn't even have to be correct, just make sure the host/domain part is the correct official local authority, and they'll do your right really quickly.

Had a cancelled flight with Swiss which they claimed was birdstrike and hence force majeur. So no compensation …

Have you filed a complaint with the swiss air regulatory authority? I did that when Icelandair didn't comply within the allowed timeframe and suddenly they were much more forthcoming.

That policy and a long delay I had going from Iceland to London made the whole airfare for the trip (canada to london and back) free. I think I even made money.

However, you have to be insistent, I first filed a complaint with the airline, and when they didn't comply in the given amount of time, I filed a complaint with their regulatory authority, and then suddenly the airline remembered me and gave me the money.

In Australia I think there is such a rule, so when they approach the deadline, short of an option: they just cancel the flight. It doesn't count as a delay, and won't affect their statistics of delays!

Some other airlines "swap planes" and do swapsies with every passengers, on every flights, if they get a morning delay; they trickle it down all day long. It's ridiculous seeing lines of people moving to another gate, all day. When your plane arrive at your gate, you know you're being moved to another line and the delayed passengers will get your plane. So that way, delays stay within the bounds!

Sickening, I'm never flying these airlines again.

I'm not sure why the swapsies plan is unreasonable?

I show up for a flight to Mordor scheduled departure at 8 am, you for a scheduled departure at 9:30 am.

The plane scheduled for the 8 am departure is unavailable (for whatever reason) and there's a plane that can board for a 9:30 departure... Shouldn't I get preference since my flight was scheduled to leave earlier? When the other plane becomes available or is replaced, your flight will go out on that (or whatever flight in the swapsies chain).

What alternative would you prefer:

a) Early flight has to wait, maximal delay for those passengers trading off with minimal delay for others

b) Something based on class of booking + airline status + time of booking, like they use for upgrades. Frequent fliers get minimal delay, ultra economy gets maximum delay

c) prefer passengers with connections that haven't yet been missed, otherwise a or b? Maybe just prefer passengers where makable connections avoid an overnight missed connection. This one makes systemic sense, but may not be easy to compute.

> I'm not sure why the swapsies plan is unreasonable?

Imagine a route with 6 planes a day, 2 hours apart. The first flight of the day develops a problem that'll take 3 hours to repair.

Is it better to delay one plane by 3 hours; pay 200 passengers compensation; and waste 3x200=600 person-hours?

Or to delay six planes by 2 hours; pay no compensation as only 3+ hour delays get compensation; and waste 6x2x200=2400 person-hours?

If the first plane needs 3 hours to return to service, you delay the first group of passengers by 2 hours and the second group by one hour. There's no need to delay the rest of the day's flights when the plane is fixed.

The person hours of delay is still 2x200 + 1x200 = 600.

Equivalent protections have been dismantled by the Trump admin in the US.

I believe the argument is that regulation encumbers airlines and, instead, the free market will incentivise participants to handle outages and delayed flights in a competitive way.

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