Originally Posted by
tinkicker
The test though is not 'reasonability', maybe it should be but clearly the intent of the legislation was not to offer the airlines a particularly easy or cheap path out.
As an aside Ryanair certainly used to have a Learjet (or four) to fly maintenance teams and spares (and maybe crew?) about their network. May still do.
That's rather interesting... as an aside, I'm pursuing an EC261 case on U2 on behalf of Little Miss RC for an 18 hour delay - the initial few hours delay on the plane while inbound could be considered extraordinary, but much of the length of the delay to her flight is (IMO) a commercial decision to let the original crew operate the flight (they timed out on the inbound so couldn't just fly back with a few hours delay) rather than get a new crew sent out.
So good to know that it's not unreasonable to expect an airline to make new crew available at the earliest opportunity...