Lack

My mistake, I've only quoted the first paragraph of your post to sum it up. My response was about the ticket cancelation being a loophole, not code sharing - that's another subject that should require it's own attention.

SFO777

+1
Even better if you live in a jurisdiction to which OK flies. If you file in small claims court, OK has three options:
1) Ignore the claim, in which case you are likely to get a judgement against them. Want a slightly used Airbus?
2) Hire a lawyer to defend the claim.
3) Offer compensation.

The easiest and cheapest option would be #3.

irishguy28

Much better. The only issue here is the ticket cancellation - is it legal? (We can't talk about loopholes, because OK have not explained what law allows them to cancel the ticket after 3 days. Without knowing what law they have invoked, we can't yet say whether or not there is a loophole involved). They blame a "mistake", but to cancel the ticket - in direct contradiction of their customer service charter - is the questionable action here.

As SFO777 has pointed out above, there are several possible outcomes if you were to test the legality of this action. Though there is always the possibility that any court may summarily throw the case out, given that they could just as easily state that it was clearly a mistake on the part of the airline to sell the ticket for that price.

We can't say what would happen in any such case - and different cases brought in different jurisdictions (or even different findings in the same jurisdiction) could potentially come to different conclusions.

NickB

This is optimistic. IME, in the UK, a lot of airlines tend to defend claims if they have a reasonable case. That said, OK is a fairly small outfit nd apparently not the best organised so god knows what they would do.

Lack

No matter the explanation, if OK or any other carrier can cancel a ticket and get rid of their 261/2004 obligations it is a certain loophole. Certainly, the legal way, even through a small claims court is way more complex then simply filling out a form with your local enforcement agency for the the 261/2004.
Airlines are well established in the art of evaiding responsibility, often denying warrented claims untill the local authority is involved and will sure jump with joy if they have a chance of further thin the herd by putting legal obsticle.

mgo72

Maybe already a good question is :

Who wants to get organised? Suppose that if we get organised, we can get a little better prepared for a small battle.

Even if maybe there is no legal way to win the battle, to make bad publicity in no interest of OK.

The least they could do is offer some apologies.

irishguy28

EC261/2004 is as much about forcing airlines to rethink their behaviour (spurious cancellations are now less likely than before, and airlines are presumably working harder to prevent delays/overbookings, given that there is now a greater financial impact on them for not handling these sort of situations in an optimal way) as it is about "compensating" passengers.

But you're still placing far too much emphasis on EC261/2004. When OK tore up those tickets, they did not merely "absolve" themselves of meeting the requirements of EC261/2004 on various dates over the next 12 months for their various customers, but they also absolved themselves of ALL rules, laws and regulations governing the contract that they entered into with each of those customers. EC261/2004 is not the only obligation airlines have when they sell a ticket - and anyway those provisions rarely come into play, and there is no reason to expect that many, if any, of the passengers who wished to travel would have had any reason to pursue EC261/2004 on their planned journeys. There are a lot of other more direct obligations that the airline has now absolved themselves of - such as the promise to carry the passenger on the correctly-paid flights. That's a far greater, and more pressing, transgression than saying - wait, let's see if the flight is delayed or cancelled, in which case I would have been entitled to compensation (to suggest that your only possible claim on the airline would be an EC261/2004 claim would, of necessity, require the flight you had been booked on to be cancelled, delayed by X hours, etc etc - none of which is likely to happen anyway)

Short hair Francis

Filing a class action lawsuit won't be so easy,
especially since all of us had different booking methods
(CSA, O, or EP.uk)
and different credit card countries charged.

I'm not saying I won't go the small claims route if they decided to sit with their hands close, but for now, its a wait and see approach

Anyone want to try the media for starters, who's from Czech Republic wants to get the media involved? That should be the first move!

As to whomever that keeps biting me about the 9 tickets earlier, it was 3 tickets each for 3 people for a total of 9 tkts.

This is Flyertalk, booking 9 tickets a day is small fry!
Its not like I booked 30 tickets

romandavydov

At Russian travel forum now appears information about one lady who were abble depart successfully with this ticket of March 27! Here is a chance! If at least one passenger was abble to travel according to this fare, so OK can't decline other passenger to use it!

benzemalyonnais

Link please!

I'm concerned about the lack of communication here. Not everyone who booked this fare could be an airline genius like we are. They went onto orbitz, typed in BKK-Europe, and bought the cheapest fare. I know that if any other of my family members bought this, they would not know how to check the fare online and all that and if there was no communication from OK, they would show up at the airport to check in. Then they would say, you have no ticket, and they would say yes we do, and would provide the email confirmation.

jfkeze

for those thinking about Small Claims...
Wandering Aramean sued BA about the India deal
http://boardingarea.com/blogs/thewan...itish-airways/
His comment was: Airline unilaterally revoked tickets that were issued in compliance with their ticketing rules...

Czech airlines has a New York office (showed up on my Orbitz reservation) so I know have a place to serve the documents...
not sure when I'll have time to go to Jamaica to file, but I probably will... they'll settle or if they don't, spend more defending themselves than it's worth.

irishguy28

Can we actually determine if this is true? I see two problems.

a) to the best of my knowledge, the earliest known date found for this deal were for departures from April 17. Certainly, I have seen no posts either here or on vielfliegertreff that indicate that the "cheap" tickets were available for departures prior to that date.

b) even if there was, in fact, availability before April 17 (and maybe March 27 was the only date available!!!), OK did not begin cancelling tickets until yesterday, March 28. Therefore, of course any such ticket that was supposed to depart on March 27 would have been honoured as such a ticket could not possibly have been cancelled yet. (If she booked a return ticket, she may find that her return has been cancelled or that further action - maybe including additional payment - is necessary before she can complete the ticket)

Regardless, this certainly will have no impact on those of us receiving cancellation emails.

travelkid

Incorrect. You need to present yourself for check-in in time, not to have actually checked in. Which makes a big difference when your ticket is cancelled.

And its definately a loophole if the carrier can cancel pax even at gate to avoid the regulation in terms of compensation for denied boarding.

EU can legislate business practice by EU registered companies, marketing and selling products in EU, despite delivery outside EU. Should be no problem to legislate OK in an instance like this. Clearly not EY though.

I agree EU reg wouldnt help you in BKK, but maybe in AUH, if you got yourself there. (Notice German court cases where LH were not allowed to cancel subsequent flights).

sbm12

FWIW, I don't believe I was in the right when I filed that claim; I was mostly just bored. I'm also pretty sure that I just looked up the exact address of where the BA offices were based on the NY Department of State systems - note that you MUST have it EXACTLY correct in the claim or you'll be dismissed - and that when I filed they took care of serving BA for me. If you win a judgment then you have to serve them with a notice to collect, I believe, but that was it.

romandavydov

Here is a link to that message in Russian travel forum about lady who been abble to travel using this ticket: http://forum.awd.ru/viewtopic.php?p=2633840#p2633840