Originally Posted by
The doomed
Trying to establish what if any claim I have with a recent trip or if it's instead a matter for travel insurance.
Aeromexico ticket
Sat 28 Jan
EDI - CDG - LHR - MEX
AF1380 CDG to LHR was delayed an hour, meaning I would miss my connection to MEX.
AF contacted Aeromexico and re-routed me from CDG direct to MEX.
No issues with the above, disruption handled well, staff in CDG lounge tool care of the communications and got me on my way.
However, when I tried to check-in on app for my return flight, I'm told I'm not able to and need to check in at the airport. Fair enough, not uncommon. When I got to the airport, I was told I had a booking but no ticket due to an error AF made when rerouting me. So in essence, the original delay is the source of the later problems.
Thu 02 Feb
MEX - CDG - EDI
I'm not able to check in online so get to MEX approx 3hrs ahead of my flight, with a few colleagues.
Aeromexico agent tells me they can see I have a booking, but due to the changes AF made when rerouting my outbound flight, I do not have a valid ticket to return. Aeromexico and AF spent over 2hrs trying to sort it, in the end the options presented were:
1. Fly on AM03 as I had planned, pay circa $5,000 for a busines seat in line with my original booking.
2. Fly on AM03 as planned, but in economy for c$1,400.
3. Wait 24hrs and fly the next day on AF175 in business at no cost, incurring the costs of an additional unplanned 24hrs in Mexico City.
I took option 3 as I didn't fancy the risk of being out of pocket if my insurance would not cover the cost of the new booking.
Have I got any claim under EU rules? Or should I use insurance to claim for the extra costs etc?
Your case seems mishandling the original rerouting CDG-MEX. They should have ensured your flight back was still valid but apparently the Mexico people only could see you missed a segment that invalidated the next segments. Had a similar issue when I upgraded with miles a flight Barranquilla-Panama-AMS for the Panama-AMS stretch - they forgot to keep the Baranquilla-Panama stretch alive. I somehow still could do OLCI for this but at the airport I was summoned to the counter 30-40 minutes before departure with staff telling me I had no valid ticket. In my case solved after frantic calling by both agent and myself to KLM - with oral confirmation that KLM Colombia would guarantee the seat they let me go (also since I was clearly in distress, my story plausible and the seat available anyway).
My guess is EU261 will not easily work here. AF made a rebooking mistake that lead to denied boarding. That is something different as overbooking, delay or cancellation for which EU261 was designed. You could still try to get the 600 Euro compensation of course - jurisprudence often ends up being quite on the side of the customer. But I would expect AF initially denying it and hence a long battle. I would in any case claim the hotel night and similar costs with AF - that this is a mistake at their side seems obvious, and until now in my experience AF/KL always compensated this.
In my case my complaint yielded a bunch of miles to compensate for the bad experience - from my point of view sufficient since in the end I was on my original flights.