bmpeers

Today after a 5 month battle with American Airlines I finally won by battle for compensation under EC Regulation 261/2004 and had £477 paid into my UK bank account.

In August 2012 I checked in to fly from LHR to DAY via ORD. The flight to ORD was delayed 12 hours. I got rechecked on to a United flight routed through DC but still ended up with a 6 hour delay.

I then wrote them what I think totaled 5 emails to claim compensation.

There first response was to give me 10,000 miles.
I said I want to claim €600 in line with the EU recommendation.
They then said they would have to wait for the ECJ case brought by BA / Easyjet etc.. to settle before reviewing any claims.
Once this was finalized in October I emailed them again claiming compensation. They wrote back and said that they would only honour delay claims fron this point forward.
I wrote back asking for the address they would like me to send legal proceedings to in the UK so I could take my claim to court.
In mid-December they replied and said they would pay the compensation.

Over a month and half later and after another chasing email and phone call the money was finally received into my UK bank account.

Note - I believe the flight delay was due to an AA operational issue and was not a result of bad weather and other 'acts of god'.

I can't see a thread specifically on EU passenger compensation, but I wanted other flyers to know you are entitled to it and you can get it if you push hard enough!

austin_modern

seems like a pretty reasonable amount of effort for $750 bucks. Congrats.

bmpeers

probably 3 hours in total spread over the course of the saga.
worth it

Zaynab

Not bad; still fighting with VS for a delay in April 2012. Party of 5!
I may resort to www.euclaim.eu - but they want 24% of the dough.

hillrider

Seems like a better outcome than bending over.

Thanks for not letting AA get away with it. If nobody chases these down it's an open ticket for them to abuse customers more.

for the EC Regulation 261/2004 not having built-in penalties for these shenanigans, but who would have thought that the airlines would not have behaved with the upmost integrity and respect for the law?

DillMan

Sketchy to the say the least. They have their domain registration obfuscated (to be generous). They use almost every blackhat SEO technique available. I'm not sure I want someone helping me in a legal manner that has such obviously gray ethics.

Upgraded!

Never before have personal injury lawyers looked so good .

Dave Noble

I have trouble seeing anything wrong about their service based on the website. All it appears that they do is provide assistance to those needing it to start a claim. They do not seem to do anything other than give assistance with thing like pre-filled in claim forms

I do not see that their service would be that useful for someone who knows what they are doing, but for others may help

Shona

How are you fighting with VS-( trial by battle or or trial by ordeal?).

Here is some discussion of previous fisticuffs

http://flightmole.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1665

Zaynab

Ah ... it has been some time since I have visited their website. They (or maybe the previous owners of the website?) were the ones that went to court and fought for the current compensation program.
Before the court ruling, Euclaim offered a no cure no pay service for 24% of the compensation. As airlines now seem to adhere to the ruling (albeit after delaying as much as possible), I can imagine Euclaim has no real advantage over DIY.

My problem with VS is that the ticket was a combo of feeder flight from mainland Europe to LHR and LHR-SFO (in UC). On the way back there was a 2.50 hour delay on the VS flight; we missed the feeder flight on BA (same ticket!) back home; and had a 24 hour delay. As VS says 2.50 hour delay < 3 hours so no compensation, we will have to explain that due to that delay we missed the other flight. Nothing big, will work out, and @ € 3000 for 5 tickets it is worth doing.

imagineertobe

I think this thread is a de facto master thread; perhaps the mods want to make it officially so?

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/ameri...ation-due.html

Xero

Good job on getting what you were entitled to. I feel you deserve more compensation for AA purposefully dragging its feet. The airline knew the compensation was due and chose not to give it.

The EU needs to figure out how to make this law more fair and easier to file claims on.

PainCorp

The law helping consumers?! I can't quite understand this concept...