Originally Posted by
sonomawine
This evening I was reviewing my travel plans and saw I was downgraded from F to J on the DXB - ATH portion ex SFO. I read through this thread and decided to phone EK to see what they could do. The agent was clueless and when I asked if I could just reroute to MUC he put me on hold and said yes I could, they would waive the change fee (on a full F flex fare ticket?!?) and charge me the fare difference. He also asked me how I found out about the change, which I thought was odd. I thanked him for his time and just sent an email to customer affairs in New York.
To that end, I am reading some conflicting posts and am unsure if I have a EU 261/2004 claim (of course after flying)? The ticket was booked by AMEX (US) ATH-DXB-SFO-DXB-ATH. I would be fine with EK changing my ticket to MUC in F, but the one agent I spoke with said it wasn't possible.
Did you make the change to go via MUC or not? It is a bit unclear
The regulation is pretty simple in that if a passenger is downgraded on a flight where the regulation is applicable then 75% of the fare is due to be reimbursed to the passenger
It also seems that EK will not pay up without a fight
Unfortunately the one person I have seen who has posted having tried to take it to court seems to have failed after failing to turn up to present their claim ; apparantly EK sent no one from its side to defend it
The more recent poster ( in this thread ) never did come back with information on the outcome of his claim
Unfortunately for you in your specific case , the flight which has been downgraded ( DXB-ATH on Emirates ) is not one which is covered by the regulation , so you would have no claim in this case
If it was an ATH-DXB sector, then that would be covered
In order for a flight to be one under which EC261 applies , in simple terms has to either be
A flight departing from an airport in Europe - on any airline
or
A flight departing from an airport outside Europe to Europe - on a European airline
( it is slightly more complicated than that but is close enough for most purposes
)