Originally Posted by
IAN-UK
The badly drafted legislation is at the heart of this. The airline will routinely put an "extraordinary" sticker on any such incident. There's no cost or penalty for so doing. It is then up to you and/or the enforcer, courts etc to prove that the incident was not Extraordinary in terms of the Regulation.
Actually, as with the Montreal Convention, the burden of proof for
"extraordinary circumstances" is on the carrier, not the PAX:
From Article 5 of Regulation EC 261/2004:
"3. An operating air carrier shall not be obliged to pay
compensation in accordance with Article 7, if it can prove that
the cancellation is caused by extraordinary circumstances
which could not have been avoided even if all reasonable
measures had been taken."