Perxius

Hi I recently had a booking with AF in Business class, that included:
BCN-CDG
CDG-DSS
DSS-CDG
CDG-BCN
At the time of check in I was informed I was being downgraded from Business to Premium Economy on the CSG-DSS leg due to equipment change. I found it odd since I’m a FB Gold but still went along with it.
After the whole trip was finished I started a claim with AF and they offered money and some vouchers as compensation. The thing is that according to EU regulation EC 261/2004 if you are downgraded in a flight that originates in the EU and is more than 3500km long as is this case, you are entitled to 75% reimbursement of the ticket value.
Now the question is if I was only downgraded on that leg, is that 75% only applied to that leg or the entire ticket, because what they are offering is not even close to 75% of the whole ticket, but I have no way of knowing the price of that single leg. And the regulation doesn’t clarify that as far as I checked

trooper

Its surely 75% of THAT leg... why would it apply to segments NOT downgraded?

Perxius

And how am I suppose to calculate if it actually is 75% of the leg…

brunos

AF has their internal pricing and they are the one to do the calculation.
If it were a simple CDG-DSS-CDG, compensation should be near 75% of 50% of the ticket cost.
Just an example, the whole ticket was 3,000 (CDG-DSS-CDG), you should get around 1,125.
But you also flew the BCN-CDG in business, so compensation in your case (BCN-CDG-DSS-CDG-BCN) be less than 1,000, if you paid 3,000.

How much did they offer?

Perxius

800 eur for two, the total ticket was 3000 eur plus 1000 eur of tax, which includes carrier surcharges, for both tickets

hhdl

BCN-CDG-DSS is 3418 miles, of which CDG-DSS is 2615, so if allocating by distance (which is, IINM, how they apportion fare for determining FB mileage earn when there's a mix of AFKL and other marketing carriers), that segment would be about 38.2% of the fare, so a little less than 29% of the fare (after deducting taxes which are equal between W and J (which is most of them: generally for luxury tax purposes, W/J/P are equal)) refunded. On a 3000 euro roundtrip (incl taxes), I'd expect something like 750 euro back in this situation.

hhdl

800/3000 is about 27%, something like 870 would be suggested based on distance. It's up to you if it's worth it to chase that down.

Perxius

Actually it wouldn’t be just 3000 since they should also refund the carrier surcharges which are included in the 1000 of tax

Fabo.sk

The price considered must also include the tax as that is considered an integral part of the ticket price.

However also the price for BCN-DSS does not have to be half of BCN-DSS-BCN. You should be able to understand what part of the ticket price goes to outbound and what part goes to inbound from the receipt.

hhdl

Per Mennens, taxes and charges which are not a function of the class (or by extension, I suspect, a function of the price) aren't considered part of the price for determining downgrade compensation (unless you're aware of a more recent ruling which has refined Mennens):

Accordingly, the answer to the third question is that Article 10(2) of Regulation No 261/2004 must be interpreted as meaning that the price of the ticket to be taken into consideration for the purposes of determining the reimbursement owed to that passenger, where he is downgraded on a flight, is solely the price of the flight itself, to the exclusion of taxes and charges indicated on that ticket, as long as neither the requirement to pay those taxes and charges nor their amount depends on the class for which that ticket has been purchased.

Additionally, Mennens specifies the distance method for calculation of the price where a segment breakdown isn't available:

Having regard to all the foregoing considerations, the answer to the first and second questions is that Article 10(2), read in conjunction with Article 2(f), of Regulation No 261/2004, must be interpreted as meaning that where a passenger is downgraded on a flight, the price to be taken into account in determining the reimbursement for the passenger affected is the price of the flight on which he was downgraded unless that price is not indicated on the ticket entitling him to transport on that flight, in which case it must be based on the part of the price of the ticket corresponding to the quotient resulting from the distance of that flight and the total distance which the passenger is entitled to travel.

BCN-DSS is likely priced separately from DSS-BCN, but CDG-DSS vs. BCN-CDG isn't priced separately. If the outbound is a lower price than the inbound, it seems likely that 800 euro is close to the Mennens-prescribed compensation.