Hi, I have a question on said flights. Airfrance claims passengers of these cancelled flights are not eligible for compensation under the applicable EU regulations referring to the reason being "ground damage on the aircraft" and that such a "type of last minute flight cancellation [is] beyond the control of the carrier".
Having worked with legal issues (on a different legal area) for years, this sounds as an evasive manoeuvre by AF--i.e., nonsense. As far as I read the regulation and relevant court decisions, AF has to pay.
What's your take on it?
It is the all too usual evasive response from an airline in this context.
Airlines rarely pay flight cancellation compensation without some hard pushing by the passenger(s) involved and sometimes not until taken to court over the issue.
You have presumably read the Wallentin-Hermann judgement (
http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/...:EN:HTML)which gives a pretty good reason to believe that should court action be contemplated then the airline may have a hard time convincing a court that "extraordinary circumstances" apply. Remember too that the ariline has also to satisfy the linked test of having taken "all reasonable measures" to prevent a cancellation.