sgm

Has anyone ever taken Air France to court over being denied compensation for a cancelled flight?

After months of trying to get Air France to pay me compensation, Britain's Civil Aviation Authority has given up, closed my file and suggested that I take Air France to court! I may do, just because I am so annoyed at Air France for giving me, a (until this happened) weekly commuter with them, the silent treatment.

Background:

1. Sunday 10 April 2011, London City Airport to Dublin.
Cancellation due to technical fault with operating aircraft. I am in
possession of letter from the airline confirming the
cancellation/cause. Was rescheduled for the next day.

2. Requested compensation the next day from Air France under EC REGULATION 261/2004 and received a swift refusal.

3. Contacted the CAA. Waited for three months and they 'ruled' in my favor and contacted Air France. No reply from Air France and the CAA contacted them a further 4 times. CAA then closed case.

AF 001

Suggest you to get in touch with EU claim, one case from a friend of mine was solved within two months, another case we are fighting now since two years and it went to court.

The good thing is, there is no cost for you involved at all, but you have to share the compensation in case they will (have to) pay, which I think is fair.

Centipede100

They have, and the following cases have been reported:

http://www.flightmole.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=23

The CAA have no enforcement powers so your only options are to enforce the claim yourself via the County Court process, use EUclaim, or forget about it and get on with your life.

The CAA have actually done you a favour if they have considered that your claim for compensation is valid. Armed with that letter from them along with the letter from AF giving you the reason for the cancellation, you should issue a claim against AF via Moneyclaimonline (MCOL) which is an electronic way into the small claims track of the county court process.

Given that the facts in your case have been established, AF are going to find it difficult to mount a substantive defence based on precedent case law (cf Wallentin-Hermann) so your claim may even be settled before a hearing by the airline.

This shouldn't involve you in a massive amount of time/work so why would you hand over 30% of your claim to EUclaim.

KLflyerRalph

Go for EUclaim which has the no-cure-no-pay policy. Nothing to loose.

brunos

You do not give much info on your experience, e.g. did you fly the next day, did you get offered hotel and food, etc ?
But apparently, the compensation that you are entitled according to EC261/2004 is €250. Not a huge amount compared to time potentially lost. But I guess that it becomes a matter of principle.
As you are based in UK, an easy alternative seems to go the small claims track. Using a commercial service such as EUclaim will still mean that you spend significant time filling out their forms and providing all documents. And you can guess that they are not highly motivated by the low amount that they can hope to obtain.

Shona

As I view the current EUClaim portal as directed to a UK audience base that “claims management business” makes no current offer "to take your claim to court". They advance still that promise in other web portals.

Only a Solicitor can present somebody’s claim (other than the litigant him/herself that is) in court proceedings in England and Wales .

A Dutch based and entirely unregulated “claims management agency” cannot conduct litigation on behalf of anybody in the UK. They cannot “bring a claim before an English Court”.

Therefore "using EUClaim" would simply not serve any purpose if the OP’s intention is to present whatever grievance(s) the OP has before a UK court.
In any event before a “claim” can be presented-that claim might need to be reviewed-as the claim might not just be restricted to a claim for the Art 5/7 compensation tariff claim recovery but may present a variety of legal causes of action.

Unless those potential claim aspects are reviewed on an individual basis either by the OP him/herself or somebody competently on his/her behalf-the OP could suffer prejudice. Some of these claim aspects might be more contentious/controversial than others.

Therefore the OP could lose significantly by “using EUClaim”- if they are useless for the purpose that the OP intends them to put them to use-namely delivering any claim by court proceedings before an English court.

Secondly the OP could lose out by not reviewing the entire possible redress that the OP might have available to the OP. If a claim is obliged to present before a court then there is even less inhibition to present any other grievances ( beyond claiming the Art 5/7 compensation tariff at the same time).

(One of the reasons why only legal professionals are allowed to present grievances on behalf of others before a court in the UK the first place-so that litigants are indeed afforded the opportunity of competent legal advice to prepare any claim presented before a court).

Therefore in summary-a Solicitor can conduct litigation on behalf of a litigant client. A Solicitor represents and advises a passenger litigant client. A Solicitor cannot allow the passenger client to prejudice him/herself unless the clients allow this prejudice him/herself and the Solicitor so advises/covers himself.

Whatever other countries allow is up to them and their own code of ethics/laws etc.

An airline and their lawyers will understand these simple fundamentals even if a passenger doesn’t.

sgm

Thanks everyone.

Issued legal proceedings in the Northampton County Court today against Air France via the small claims procedure.

Sad it come to this.

brunos

You are lucky to be based in UK and have the small claim procedure.

Cupart

I wish you the best of luck sgm ^

Let us know what the outcome is when that time arrives...

Shona

I'm curious as to how the wheels of justice are rolling given the timescales for such court proceedings. Are you able to tell us?

delanotre

In France it is same with "juridiction de proximite" as it concerns less than €4.000.

Shona

Is it conceivable that AF raised a defence to the court action saying, inter alia, that they ( AF) are not the responsible operating carrier and this has left you wondering what to do next?

JOUY31

Well, EC 261/2004 does indeed involve the operating carrier, which unless I am mistaken would be Cityjet.