Originally Posted by SK AAR

Taking the airline to small claims court to get rebooked into a higher booking class for a date of your convenience seems excessive and something that the vast majority of pax are not prepared to do. Also to be able to advance a claim in court the pax would have to purchase the more expensive fare for dates the pax wants to travel and then claim reimbursement of what was paid for the new ticket and already paid for the cancelled flight; again the vast majority of pax would never be prepared to do that/to take this risk of succeeding in court afterwards.

I'm not convinced that your interpretation of art. 8, 1 (c) will prevail in court. Obviously, there is a distinction between asking to travel at earliest opportunity (after original flight date) - this is described in art. 8, 1 (b) - and rebooking to any day at the convenience of pax (this is art. 8, 1 (c). I believe you are referring to the art. 8, 1 (b) situation which indeed allows the pax to be rebooked under comparable transport conditions (i.e. in the same service class regardless of booking class) whereas under art. 8, 1 (c) rebooking is "subject to availability of seats", which in reality means that the same booking class needs to be available. If art. 8, 1 (c) was read the way you do (that the pax is entitled to be rebooked regardless of booking class) there is no difference between rebooking under art. 8, 1 (b) and art. 8, 1 (c) - this is not the true legal construction as art. 8, 1 (b) and 8, 1 (c) deals with 2 very different situations, sorry.