Babies Now Due Compensation for Delayed Flights
Jennifer Billock April 07, 2017
Babies are now due compensation for delayed flights in a ruling that might inspire tantrums.
In a ruling against Ryanair, the airline now has to pay compensation to all passengers on a delayed flight – including babies, who only cost a minimal infant fee for an extra seat belt. The suit happened after a flight was delayed nine hours and the airline refused to compensate both a male passenger and his six-month-old daughter for their lost time.
The airline has called the ruling “daft” and says infant compensation claims are “idiotic.”
“It is absurd that infants (under two years of age), who do not pay an airfare or occupy a seat, can now apply for up to €250 EU261 ‘compensation’ for a flight delay, when their accompanying adults will already have been compensated,” a Ryanair spokesman said to Telegraph Travel. “In this case, the two parents and a sister have already received €1,200 in EU261 compensation, which is almost four times the three one-way airfares they paid of just £104. This is compo culture gone mad.”
But some passengers (and judges) don’t agree. Babies are passengers on the plane as well, as far as law is concerned – even if they haven’t paid full price for a seat.
“Many passengers in many situations (for example, on buses and trains) travel without having a seat,” Judge Pearce, the judge who heard the case, said during his ruling. “They are nonetheless passengers for that, and I can see no justification for restricting the meaning of the word in this one situation to exclude those without their own seat.”
[Photo: Shutterstock]
I agree with retiredfromhilton. One of the down-sides to the Airline Deregulation Act was that the Federal government -- and competition -- were supposed to protect the passengers from abuse by the airlines (rather than allowing the States to do so). Hasn't worked out too well. With all the airline mergers there is no true competition for most routes, and the Fed has pretty well abdicated actual oversight. When Congress starts making noise about regulating (usually after some egregious abuses), a hearing is held, everyone makes pious speeches about protecting the public, the lobbyists get out their checkbooks, everything just goes away and the abuses continue. Maybe, in view of the de facto absence of competition, airlines should be considered like utilities and treated as regulated monopolies.
I agree with retiredfromhilton. One of the dow
Can a claim be submitted retroactively with this new information in hand?
US airline passengers can only look to the EU longingly. Our airline oligopoly subjects us to delays because, without having to pay substantial compensations to passengers, it makes sense to keep decades old computer systems, which paralyze airlines with increasing frequency. Likewise mechanical delays and other 'operational' delays are comparatively cheap for US airlines. The lack of equitable compensation in the US might be justificable if US airfares were lower than those in Europe. But European budget carriers provide far less costly service than American, United, Delta, Jet Blue, Southwest, Alaskan or even the especially dreadful Spirit.