EU 261 Question

Mokuba

Hi,

Currently in Birmingham airport and our flight has been delayed. The expected departure time is 16:40 while the original departure time was 13:15.

So this particular plane is a Stobart Air 72-600. It's itinerary for the day was as follows, from what I can tell.

Cork - Birmingham 06:45-08:10
Birmingham - Shannon 08:40 - 10:20
Shannon - Birmingham 11:05 - 12:45
Birmingham - Cork 13:10 - 14:40

The Birmingham to Shannon flight due to depart at 08:40 has not yet taken off. The reason given for this was a bird strike.

We are on the 13:10/15 Birmingham to Cork so don't expect to be leaving until around 18:30 or so at the earliest.

I know Bird Strike is an extraordinary circumstance but can the airline claim that for knock on delays later in the aircraft's rotation?

Mokuba

Well they have denied that they owe due to extraordinary circumstances, but I've said that they can't use an extraordinary circumstance to explain away rotational delays far later in the aircraft's rotation. They had 5 hours to ensure another aircraft was ready to fly the route on time.

We'll see how it goes from here, I'll happily go to Small Claims though.

phildin

I had a similar scenario previously, a flight from UK to Ireland was delayed due to fog at the airport. Fair enough, the fog wasn't their fault but the flight didn't leave until about 6 hours later, long after the fog had dissipated. I filed a claim with Ryanair directly which they denied claiming the fog was outside of their control.

Ryanair had signed up for an alternative dispute resolution (ADR) process at the time so the dispute was handled by the "Retail Ombudsman". My point to them was that the 6 hour delay was due to operational decisions made my Ryanair notwithstanding that the fog wasn't their fault; this claim was upheld (note that they don't charge the customer for this service so you get the full award)

From digging around, it looks as if Ryanair no longer use an ADR process so if you don't get the reply you want from Ryanair, you will need to submit the claim to the UK Civil Aviation Authority.

Mokuba

This is actually with Stobairt.

phildin

Sorry, I missed that. I think the process will be the same though, raise it with the CAA and include all of your correspondence so far. They'll also need your flight number, date and booking reference. If it's not the CAA that deals with this they should redirect you. I don't think small claims would get you anywhere with respect to the EU 261 claim, I image they would just tell you to file your claim.

Mokuba

They basically accepted my point about exceptional circumstances in rotational delays not being valid and then claimed exceptional circumstances against the flight that they tried to get over to sort the situation.

I submitted a claim with small claims but also asked aviationreg.ie if I should be doing it through them.