Originally Posted by
irishguy28
Whether or not an airline "selected" a particular vendor is completely irrelevant.
Airlines select various third parties for all parts of their business. A strike at a third party is considered an "exceptional circumstance" under the terms of EC261/2004....despite the fact that said airline "selected" said third party.
The events of yesterday were clearly an "exceptional circumstance" in the meaning of EC261/2004.
(Your "selection" test is not one I have seen used in any EC261/2004 caselaw)
The thing is, I sort of agree with you, but can easily see the point of view that this was not an exceptional circumstance. If a computer died at an airline's back office causing a flight delay, it would not be an exceptional circumstance because they're expected to have IT resources to deal with it. This is kind of similar. It is generally good IT practice to not roll out patches to production without testing them in a sandbox environment that replicates your production environment. This could've been caught there. So there is a case to be made that this should've been the responsibility of the airlines.
Of course, it is pretty clear that this was kind of an exceptional thing given how widespread the issue was. But I think there is a good unbiased case here that EC261 could apply.