Originally Posted by
oliver2002
Please don't get EU261 issues mixed up. DOT/EU consumer protection laws require the airline to find alternatives to get you from A to B as agreed upon when you purchased the ticket. SAS is doing the cancellations at short notice so it can move over the pax to any IATA ariline using the irreg procedures laid down in IATA reg 652d. Under this system, SAS can book you into the same class of service and get an endorsement from the operating carrier. Star Alliance partners will give an automatic endorsement, others may reserve the right to refuse the endorsement. So if you can give the agent an alternative on *A which has space in the cabin they will rebook you without issues.
EU261 offers consumers protection in case no alternative is possible, but it is basically a refund. Compensation for the situation is unlikely, since they will claim it is because of a strike. You can go to court for that, but since the compensation is 600€/person, you will not cover your legal costs.
If the alternative is a few days later and you are 'stranded', the airline has to cover your accomadation and meals. Dr Böse has succesfully sued and won such compensation:
https://www.drboese.de/
At least in my case this isn't how they handled it. They marked the flight as cancelled in the booking only a couple of days out, then threw their hands up saying "there are no available rebooking options, please contact us". And then made it roughly impossible to get an agent on the line. Heck, I tried calling within 24 hours of my flight and got told that they didn't even have any capacity in their hold queue and had the system hang up on me.
You can still claim EC261 compensation even if you are rebooked, as long as you reach your destination late (the number of hours depending on the distance of the flight). And as far as I can tell it's 600 per cancellation, so if they keep "rescheduling" you on their flight the next day and then cancelling that it quickly adds up to enough to make a fight worthwhile.