Originally Posted by
JKL93
Hi all,
first time poster here - really appreciate any advise anyone has!
Three years ago I flew to Kuala Lumper from London Heathrow via Doha with Qatar Airways. The flight to Doha was cancelled, and I was put on another flight the next day which meant arriving in KL over 24 hours late.
I wrote to the airline stating EU regulation rules asking for the compensation. They denied stating bad weather. Though I’m pretty sure this was not the case.
With lots of back and forth with the CAA asking for there help over the last year, they have told me that the airline has paid compensation on this flight previously and admitted fault. They themselves have written to the airline and have recently wrote to me saying they had no response from QA and nothing further they could do.
The next obvious step would be going through the UK small claims court. Two questions I have before I do this are:
1. Is there a way to find out the actual reason for a flight cancellation as neither QA or the CAA are giving or do not have this info.
2. Is it worth going down the small claims court route? £50 fee for submitting a claim will have an impact on me and I don’t want to waste it.
Sorry for the long post but I wanted to give all the info, and once again thanks to anyone who has some advise!
Welcome to FT, hope you do stay, it's a lovely place here.
I would suggest a no-win-no-fee solicitor. Judging by your situation, you may have better success with experts who have dealt with this before, as opposed to attempting to rock it yourself. How reliable is the information from CAA re QR having paid compensation on this flight previously? Is it for the exact same circumstances? Unfortunately your elaboration, while detailed, still lacks key information (playing devil's advocate - the devil is in the details - I'd argue that it may have been an out-of-court settlement, which may mean that this would not be admissible).
I've engaged in several of such claims before by EU-based airlines where they have attempted to weasel their way out of a EU261 claim, only to make prompt remittances to lawyers' accounts once I engage with one of the guys (for full disclosure, I recall their fee being 25% inc VAT of the recovered compensation amount, if you do the math, i think it's darn good value). Also on a related note, realistically, airlines are in a tough spot at the moment, so I predict that you may not make much progress during this time specifically.