Fergo

I recently flew from Birmingham, UK to Ercan, North Cyprus via Istanbul on a single ticket. The flight from Birmingham took off roughly 15 minutes late, and on landing the plane taxied for around 20 minutes and the subsequent bus to the terminal was around another 15 minutes. By the time I entered the terminal, the gate for my connecting flight had closed and the flight had departed.

The connection time was only an hour to start with, however my understanding of the EU regulation is that this (extraordinary circumstances aside) is solely the airlines responsibility as to getting you to your final destination, and a delay over 3 hours meets the criteria for compensation.

I raised this with TK, however in their initial response they said:
I am virtually certain that my circumstance meets the EU 261 criteria (and they essentially allude to the fact there is no extraordinary circumstance at play in their response), and it would be helpful if firstly anyone could clarify if there is anything i'm missing here, and secondly if anyone has any tips in pursuing EU 261 claims against TK, as I understand it can be like drawing blood from a stone. As far as I can see, they are trying to fob me off by claiming local regulations apply in this instance.

Thanks in advance.

dvs7310

I see no issues with your claim since you originated in the EU and suspect as well that TK is trying to get rid of you rather than paying up. There are services who specialize in EU 261 claims, though unfortunately they do take a percentage of your winnings once the airline pays.

Although you may end up getting something out of this, booking any 1 hour connection at IST is extremely risky. To make that tight of a connection, you'd have to land on time AND get an airbridge gate which is not common on narrowbody aircraft flights. International Transit Security alone can take 15-20+ minutes if you don't have Fast Pass eligibility.

Often1

Presuming that OP is a UK resident (his profile does not list anything) he can simply follow the MCOL process and no pay 25-33% of the loot to a bottom feeder claims service.

It is all online, including form letters before action for you to send to TK.

Short of a court judgment, TK won't pay.

Fergo

Thanks for the responses, confirms pretty much what I thought. Between filing a claim with MCOL, is it advisable to approach Aviation ADR which I understand TK are signed up with or the CAA as exhausting all options prior to small claims?

I’ve done this trip and connection time before (albeit from Manchester) and had no issues, even with transit security. Strangely this time and unfortunately to no advantage, the bus took us to a door which simply had a few staff checking boarding passes and directing you to international or domestic gates, no security involved. Found that quite surprising considering the current climate.

IAN-UK

That's a tad unfair.

Anecdotal, I know, but under very similar circumstances to the OPs, but one not covered by EU legislation, TK paid up immediately under Turkey's rules which largely mirror the European ones.

I'm guessing the Turkish rules that applied in my case are the "local regulations" referred to in TK's reply to the OP. So it looks like there's been a very basic misunderstanding by the customer service representative.

ajrblakey

I have a colleague of mine who flew TK 1998 (LGW-IST) on 08/09/17, connecting onto TK 44 (IST-CPT), which was scheduled to leave at 01:55am the next morning, but didn't take off until 05:20am and arrived at the gate in Cape Town just over three hours late.

Would this mean that she and her partner are eligible for €300 compensation each, even though they didn't miss the connecting flight and provided the unknown issue with the flight wasn't a extraordinary circumstance?

Kind regards,
Alex B

ajeleonard

If the fact pattern is as described then €600 each would be theoretically payable

MSPeconomist

On long haul international, does EC261 give 600 Euros for a three hour delay? I thought the threshhold was four hours. [I know Turkey isn't in the EU, but the flights originated at LGW so the real EC261 rules would apply and not any variant that TK is following.]

SK AAR

Under EC Reg. 261/04:

If the delay is > 4 hours for an eligible longhaul flight the compensation is EUR 600

If the delay is < 4 hours but >3 hours, the comp. is EUR 300

If the delay is < 3 hours, no comp. is due.

provided always of course that the delay was not caused by extraordinary circumstances.

Whether TK will admit liability for a flight outside EU is an entirely different question. Good luck! (I think you will need with this one)

Often1

It is the delay measured at the final ticketed destination which matters. While this usually works in the passenger's favor, in this case it does not. The Passenger was not delayed at the final ticketed destination because he did not misconnect.

The most common situation would be that the arrival into CPT was late enough to cause a misconnect and the rebooked CPT-XXX arrived at 3+ hours (EUR 300) or 4+ hours (EUR 600).

If the carrier is on the ball, it will deny the claim. But, always possible that as CPT-XXX was operated by some other carrier, that the xUK carrier doesn't catch this and pays out for the CPT delay. So, it is worth making the claim.

frb98mf

One of my colleagues recently had the following experience on TK. He was due to fly TK12 JFK-IST (and on to TLV) just after midnight on 2nd June, but on check-in at JFK was told the flight was cancelled. They offered no compensation or detailed reason why at the time, put him up in a hotel, and rebooked him onto LX. He arrived in TLV about 18 hours late. I nudged him to request compensation under either EU261, to which TK is a signatory, or Israel's equivalent, which all ex-TLV itineraries are covered by. Here is the key line from their response:

So, they now claim it was for bird strike, not some other tech issue. The plane (TC-JJM, 777-300) flew back from JFK at 9.30am on 2nd June, presumably empty, as TK6912. There is no trace anywhere online, on any of the multiple databases that I could find (including a couple I have paid subs to), of a bird strike on the inbound TK11. If it was serious enough to warrant the immediate cancellation of the flight, it also seems unlikely that everything was fixed by 9am, even to the lesser standards and weight of an empty plane. So I smell a rat. It seems like a good way to ensure not to have to pay a six-figure sum in compensation to a plane-load of passengers.

Can anyone shed further light on whether there was indeed a bird strike on TC-JJM on the inbound TK11 to JFK on 1st June?

Thanks...

airoli

Huh? What is your source for this statement?

I have never heard that TK would be "a signatory" to EU261 - especially since this legal framework is not signed by carriers, but by countries. Turkey has its own air passenger bill of rights, which certainly applies to TK, but it is not equal to EU261.

I don't know if and how the Israeli law applies to the return part of a ticket bought ex TLV operated by a non-Israeli airline.

IAN-UK

Turkish compensation rules closely mirror EU legislation. I have found their application far easier, faster and quicker than I've experienced with the much-loved 261. Four years on and I'm still battling with Iberia (in the Madrid courts with the help of a 25% claim handler), failed completely with Lufthansa, and TAP just wore me down.

But two experiences with Turkish resulted in payments: one was immediate, near instantaneous, within days of the incident; the other took a couple of weeks - though no argument from the airline. Both were for delays into IST and consequent missed long-haul connections: in both cases the airline came up with tickets on other carriers.

But that's just me, and not the largest of samples ; but based on my experience a clear 2-0 win for TK.

frb98mf

It follows so closely that I didn't realise it wasn't actually EU261.

Israeli law applies to any ex-TLV ticket, on both outbound and inbound.

In any case, I'd still like some help clarifying the reason for the cancelled TK12...

PerStockholm