Scheduled to fly from Orly to Madrid with a connection in Lisboa on 24 June. The flight from Orly to Lisboa was late, resulting in a missed connection to the last flight of the day from LIS to MAD. Upon arriving at LIS, there was a long queue of passengers waiting for rebooking. TAP agent told me that he could not book a hotel for them and that I should book my own hotel, make arrangements for transportation to/from the airport and that I would be reimbursed . When I questioned why, TAP representative indicated that contracted hotel rooms for the evening had been exhausted. Furthermore, TAP representatives indicated that they would reimburse hotel room for no more than 80 € per passenger. This made me believe that TAP was violating EU 261 duty to care regulations. TAP did provide, however, vouchers for meals at the airport. Low and behold, by the time all of this was sorted out it was 2300 and my attempts to book a hotel resulted in me finding a 215 € per night hotel. To add insult to injury, TAP representatives gave me a boarding pass for the next flight to Madrid, which was scheduled at 0620 on 25 June. When I noticed this, I had to get back in a long queue to ask them to change the flight to a later departure to MAD as I was exhausted (had flown from FDF to ORY earlier on 24 June). I have no idea what the reason for the delay of the ORY-LIS flight was as the weather in both airports was fine.
Here are my questions:
1. How do I file a complaint against TAP regarding the violation of duty to care under EU 261?
2. Am I entitled to EU 261 compensation?
3. Does it make any difference in regards to EU 261 compensation if I asked to be booked on a flight later than what I was originally offered?
4. Given that TAP did not provide a reason for the delay in the ORY – LIS flight, is there a way for me to determine the reason?
5. Is TAP likely to refuse to reimburse me for the hotel as it exceed 80 €?
Thank you in advance for your responses.
First, you are definitely eligible for the EU261/2004 compensation unless TAP has a valid reason that EU261/2004 won't apply for that case. ( Answer of Question 2 and 4 )
1 - You could contact them via their website and they should be assisting you. If not, you could take legal action. Another alternative is that you could use one of the agencies that would do everything for you but they could ask for %20-%40 of your claim. So, I would suggest that you try on your own
3- Unless you weren't offered to arrive within the 3-hour window of your originally scheduled LIS-MAD flight, the flight you preferred to take doesn't matter. However, if they made you sign something at LIS ( at the transfer desk ), that might cause you a problem. Sometimes, in similar cases, some airlines hand a form to the passenger to sign that the passenger had voluntarily changed his flight and would not be eligible for compensation.
5- It's TAP's duty to provide you accommodation, food, and transportation to the accommodation facility. So in your case, food was provided but accommodation and transportation were not provided. They should reimburse you but if you preferred to stay in a 5-star luxury hotel in a suite instead of a 3* or a 4* hotel, they probably won't and would have a reasonable excuse only to pay 80€.