<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by ralfkrippner:
...which is fair on options 1 and 2, but Ryanair/buzz can't offer them IMO. Option 3 is fair if they also take over the cost of your cancelled hotel/car reservations. They can not just cancel their flight without any liability if they did confirm your booking already. I'm quite sure on that and I guess that at least a german court would also say so. They decide to cancel the flight - they have to pay you for your expenses.
A valid contract was made and now they decide to cancel it one-sided. A clear case of "Schadenersatz wegen Nichterfüllung" by german laws (and I guess other countries have similar things). They can't exclude such things by T&C's as this would actually break a law - therefore option 3 alone is not valid if you had spent any money for hotel/car already.
I wonder what this decission will cost them...
[This message has been edited by ralfkrippner (edited 02-26-2003).]</font>
FYI, KLM (in the UK, at any rate) takes the same line. A few years back, they moved my flight by several hours, which would have resulted in my incurring losses on onward bookings (train, hotels,...). The line that they took was that they would offer me a reimbursement of the flight and that's it. Eventually, we managed to find a solution to the problem. However, they would not have been ready to reimburse consequential damage.
I am far from sure that I would have had a remedy in UK law and I would most certainly not have had a remedy in EU Law.