On February 8th, I flew on KL757 (AMS-PTY) with a friend. Our tickets were issued on 2 distincts PNRs as one was booked on airfrance.fr and the other one on klm.fi . We have the same status, are contributing roughly the same to AFKL revenue and were travelling on the same faring class this day. The only difference being the AMS-PTY segment issuer.

His was issued on a AF (057XXXX) ticket, mine on a KL (074XXXXX) ticketAfter boarding this plane, the crew informed us that there were problems related to cargo offloading and that the flight would stay stuck on the ground for at least an hour. The offloading finally required more than 2 hours, resulting in an additional need for deicing.The plane took off 2 hours and 41 minutes late and landed at PTY 3 hours and 35 minutes late.

KLM being responsible for this incident, I submitted two complaints under EC 61/2004 on the KL website. The complaint for my friend's ticket was processed in a fews days and KL apologised for their poor management of cargo and offered €300 cash or a €500 KL voucher (I obviously chose the latter). The complaint for my ticket took longer to unfold, and resulted in the standard message "We're sorry, but this delay is due to exceptional weather conditions that waive our responsibility under EC 61/2004".

I called the AF plat line, which apologised for the unfair treatment of my complaint and tried to force compensation, which they were unable to do, the case being handled by KL customer service. They recommended me to reply to KLM with proof that I was granted compensation for the other ticket, which I did. KL customer support stood anyway with their "exceptional weather conditions" ........ despite the email sent to my friend apologised for the poor cargo management causing the delay.

I felt so mistreated by their attitude that I tried to go further and did some research on the European Commission's website, which lists National Enforcement Bodies for "compensation and assistance to passengers in the event of denied boarding and of cancellation or long delay of flights", accessible on this link
https://ec.europa.eu/transport/sites...ent_bodies.pdf
They list "Inspectie Leefomgeving en Transport" as responsible body for The Netherlands, but the website www.ilent.nl states that they do not accept anymore complaints from individuals, and that those complaints must be raised through dutch regional courts.

I also tried to open a case on the European Commission's Online Dispute Resolution platform a month ago, but KL did not reply, probably hoping that I won't spend too much energy by hiring a Dutch lawyer for €500...

Did anyone tried another way to get EC 61/2004 compensation from KL ?