Hah: Saudia Flight Delayed In Amsterdam Over Unpaid Compensation

It's ridiculous that consumers have to give a portion of their compensation to a middle man in order to get airlines to pay what they legally owe.

The EU needs to start cracking down on this. Say, for every month compensation is delayed past the first 60 days, it doubles. Or, establish a free government-run middleman that charges the airlines 5000EUR for each case ruled against them if the claim was originally denied.

In a country that respects the rule of law there are clear and orderly enforcement procedures. There have been circumstances where a creditor can seize an aircraft

Enforcement of EU261 is so poor. Airlines can do whatever they want without any repercussions. It's a wild west and governments with their civil aviation authorities do little.

Let’s be clear. The EU is over-regulated. That stifles innovation and causes brain drain to the US. Please, Europeans, wisen up that you’re being penny wise and pound foolish with your regulations.

US: no compensation for late flights but you have private equity and venture capital principals willing to throw millions of dollars at you so you (and they) can reap returns of billions of dollars when you succeed. And if you fail? Our liability structures mean you won’t go personally bankrupt.

EU: compensation for late flights but you’re stuck in the lower middle class

Actions like this should be the norm. The only adjustment should be that airlines refusing to pay should incur a 200% penalty. If airlines know that they’re going to pay triple if they don’t pay out punctually then there would be a lot fewer delays in compensation.

There’s plenty of ULCC’s in Europe that make money, even with customer protections like EU261. If they can do it so can we. The USA desperately needs to just copy and paste EU261 for our country.

You sound very misinformed. The Netherlands and other large countries in the EU have higher average net worth.

Wealth per capita:

Netherlands - $205,000
US - $197,000

So the average EU citizen makes more money than the average American, but they also get free health care and their airline refunds are guaranteed as icing on the cake lol

Also the penalty would cover the need for 3rd party collections like this EUClaim. Their cut should come out of the penalty and fees from the airline

“US: where a tiny fraction of the country holds all the wealth and you have to hope they choose to throw you some scraps so you can succeed”

That’s some good ol’ fashion working class freedom right there

Consumers are not obligated to. Plenty of people (myself included) pursue EU261 claims without the assistance of a middleman.

It took over a year for the claims company I use to have Air Canada pay up. Took a lawsuit in the NL even.

On the other hand, LOT paid me directly after a few weeks in Canadian $ from their Toronto office.

Never did get money from Azores…

It took over a year for the claims company I use to have Air Canada pay up. Took a lawsuit in the NL even.

On the other hand, LOT paid me directly after a few weeks in Canadian $ from their Toronto office.

Never did get money from Azores…

Yeah not even close. Wealth and income are different. Look up average EU income vs average American and American is higher. There are a lot of different sources but typically it’s about 30k for the EU vs 40k for the US. If we are talking about median income it gets even larger in the US favor.

@Lucky - A Dutchie here who works in passenger rights: in Holland it works with a bailiff that has a legal status (‘gerechtsdeurwaarder’). They can seize bank accounts and assets. In this case they indeed had to go the captain of the flight, to bring them the message maps/kerosine were seized. There was no EUclaim staff at the airport.

In my experience it does the trick to just write them that if they won't pay you will take legal action through your lawyer. Worked every time, got payed full without using any middle man agencies...

I wonder why they seize the fuel in the plane, rather than the plane itself.

My guess is that the fuel is easier to carry.

If you read the story, you would understand that airlines can't do what they want. If they could do what they wanted, they would not have paid & the plane would have left on time. Super basic non-critical thinking.

And if this delay extended to 4 hours, would it have triggered another round of EU261 claims?

That’s odd considering the US and Saudi Arabia are going to be close allies in the near future. I’d expect a tourism boom in Saudi Arabia like Dubai/Las Vegas bling bling.

The prince pledged to do $600 billion in business with the U.S. and lower opec oil prices. When Trump rolled his eyes the Saudi prince upped the offer to $1 Trillion.

It’s smoke and mirrors as you pay 1000s in the US for healthcare. If Americans don’t work they either die from lack of it or go bankrupt. An American colleague pays less tax but $900 a month on private healthcare - so that’s at additional tax.
Why does everything have to be compared with the US ?? The current government there has a policy of isolation and xenophobia. In Europe we don’t care there’s no eq of ec261 in the USA. You don’t even have decent annual leave. The only country with no sick pay. Pregnant - no maternity leave and forced to take sick leave. As if it’s going to get better.

And then Americans spend all that extra income on cars because a vast majority of the population literally can't get to work without one. Yeah, this is an EU W. I don't care if I make less money if it also means I don't have to buy and maintain a $40k depreciating asset just to get to work.

If an EU261 regulation were to be adopted in the US, there would be a number of airline bankruptcies in short order. Maybe they would be forced to get their house in order, however not likely.

EU261 is great. Not only does it provide genuine compensation for delays to/from the UK/EU, it encourages airlines to fly on time (certainly within the parameters of triggering compensation). Fares continue to be cheap - eg I flew Liverpool to Barcelona for £17 this week, so fears that a similar scheme in USA will push up prices are not justified.

meanwhile, in Canada, they just refuse you compensation even if it falls under the compensation criteria. And they just laugh at you and say "what are you gonna do bro?"

A former employee who won a court settlement against Amtrak... when Amtrak didn't pay the plaintiff had the local sheriff seize and impound a locomotive. https://trainlaw.com/additional-information/firm-articles/locomotive-seized-in-settlement/

You don't have to hire a company. I successfully brought suit against a foreign airline in Denver small claims court, for a claim related to the Montreal Convention.

Inconceivably based

Nothing in this story has anything to do with the US.

This reminds me of a case a few years back. An LX flight from MUC to ZRH was severly overbooked (27 pax overbooked on a 100-seater). LX offered the EU261 by LX-vouchers, which the denied pax did not accept and called the Bavarian police. The police insisted that the captain used his corporate credit card to withdraw money from the ATM to pay out to the stranded pax. Which I think is a fair move by Bavarian police, although we got delayed by about 2 hours …

The plane may be leased and not a property of the airline.

So you haven’t succeeded I presume?
What’s the reason for your failure? Too lazy?

As you said, plane is usually owned by someone other than the airline.
Also, all seizures have to be in relation to the claim value. A (used) 787 is worth millions, not tens of thousands of Euros.
The value of fuel is easy to estimate, you can easily seize a certain amount, it is easy to move/store, it is easy to sell (should the airline refuse to pay up).
The reason why this don’t happen more often is that in many jurisdictions the law would prevent it (value of claim vs. seized/obstructed property) or because you aren’t permitted to seize the means of production or it is simply a very complicated process and unless the claimed amount is in the millions it’s not worth the hassle.

But this needed a) the involvement of a claims agency (that took a huge chunk of the money owed to pax), b) a special circumstance where a lot of money was owed to the same agency, c) a big expense and risk for the agency, d) took a couple of years, e) was only possible in one of the many jurisdictions within the EU - it wouldn’t have happened in many other countries, even though EU 261 also applies.

I can imagine the Monday morning meetings of several airlines where the chairman asks whether the airline he runs has any similar outstanding EU261 payments that might lead to the airline’s airplanes being grounded in EU countries.

And without joining a rather pointless discussion whether US or EU citizen have a higher net worth, it is fair to say that in the EU passengers enjoy better customer protection than in North America.

Since deregulation, the US airline industry has moved towards three dominating players that have significant control over prices and service levels, the former being too high and the latter being too low.

B.

The thing is, this shouldn't even be necessary in the first place, if airlines just owned up to their obligations. Unfortunately many customer service reps are instructed to deny all claims until the customer comes with a legal challenge, which few people do. That's why these claim agencies thrive, as they can lawyer up at scale.

That being said, EU legislation stipulates that you should be able to arbitrate passenger rights claims via a local government agency. Not all work at the same level of effectiveness or efficiency. I have a fresh experience with the Austrian passenger rights agency, which is actually kind of awesome and was able to get my claim settled without paying any fees to middlemen. I believe there's an initiative in the European Parliament to make the process much more streamlined.

Exactly @Arne Heins is right. Most people give up long before. In the UK you have to go to a small claims court and sometimes it costs more file the proceedings. And even if they rule in your favour, there is no enforcement, they can't do anything to ensure the airline complies. It's especially why low cost carriers like Ryanair and Wizz Air get away without paying.

Greetings from Norway.

I too have successfully filed many claims directly. But there are some where they just repeatedly deny it. (LH is a prime example of a carrier that does this. I've literally never had them just pay me.) And at some point your only option is to sic a bigger dog on them.

If more than 2 hours delay on arrival then the 100 would become entitled to compensation, and the airline could hardly say due to forces outside their control!

Completely agree - all the shananigans would stop quickly, so it would very rarely have to actually happen.

Wizzair found itself in facing a bailiff too, and coughed up - that claim was for more than EU261 - actual consequential loss. I think the claimant probably works in debt collection:
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-64999557

Has Wizzair now improved on paying out EU261 as a result?

Don't disagree,.

An easy alternative would be if an EU agency collected the data on all flights, filtered for those over the 2/3/4 hour delay, asked airlines to submit reasons for exceptions, argued with the airline about the fake excuse reasons, and published a list of the delayed flights with against each one: "eligible", "weather", "external industrial action" etc.

Might even be possible without any change in legislation.

They should have known that the Prophet's rules about stiffing infidels aren't law in any EU jurisdiction.

i hope it will happen to ethiopian airlines too. 7 hours delay claim ignored