Often1

Presuming that you do intend to pursue this, I would not send another email, but would respond with a Letter Before Action (form on the MCOL website). This serves the same purpose as another email from you in which you disclose what you know, but eliminates yet another step in the process as you will still need to send a Letter Before Action in any event. Why not save yourself 30+ days?

Im a new user

This is debatable.

According to art. 9, the airline should provide food and a hotel room. If the airline doesn't provide this, then the passengers seek compensation from the airline for the airline's failure to fulfill its legal obligations (usually an amount equal to what the passenger had to pay to get food and a hotel room at his own expense).

According to art. 8, the passenger should be rerouted "under comparable transport conditions" and "at the earliest opportunity." If the airline fails to do this (for example by not rerouting at the earliest opportunity but waiting a bit longer), then I'd imagine that the passenger would be entitled to compensation from the airline (probably corresponding to what the passenger paid for rerouting at his own expense).

It is unclear what "under comparable transport conditions" means. If the other flight was "under comparable transport conditions" then the OP is maybe entitled to compensation for the new flight.

At the very least, the OP will have to pay for one of the flights: either the new one or the original one.Both Copenhagen and Belfast are on the €250 regime. However, it may be more expensive to reroute those passengers if there are fewer available seats on flights to Copenhagen.

Often1

There is no precedential authority that a carrier must rebook OA. Some do and some don't. Some rebook high-level elites OA and others do not. But, EC 261/2004 does not require OA rebooking, at least now.

There is also nothing in the Regulation which suggests that if one uses self-help to rebook, that one may simply claim it back from the operating carrier.

The key is to be forewarned that one may well eat the cost of the self-help.

Im a new user

That's why I wrote that "It is unclear what "under comparable transport conditions" means." It may well be that the conditions are not comparable if the carrier is not the same as the one originally booked.

If the carrier doesn't fulfill its rebooking obligations, the passenger would normally be entitled to compensations. Ideally, the obligations should be tested in court so that people will know what rights they have. However, it could be expensive for the passenger to test this if the passenger is wrong, so it's better if it is tested by "someone else" who would then be the one who risks having to pay a large amount of money.

Often1

Just to be clear, this is a very common scenario, yet here we are at the end of 2018, and this issue has not yet been tested. Or it has been tested and nobody has taken it to the ECJ or a national precedential court.

Im a new user

The best I've found is this, an issue of the Official Journal of the European Union which has some comments from the European Commission on Regulation 1371/2007 on train travel. Section 4.2.3 discusses the meaning of "comparable transport conditions" under that regulation. As Regulation 261/2004 on air travel uses an almost identical formulation, "comparable transport conditions" might have the same meaning under both regulations. To my knowledge, it has not been tested in court under either reglation.

MB_again

I recently had a precise 3hr 1min delay on an Easyjet flight from Inverness to Luton, for which I made a claim and was given a final response that this was due to ATC restrictions outside their control, and therefore qualified as extraordinary circumstances, i.e. no compensation payable.

At Inverness Airport, they flirted with the idea of delaying the flight overnight due to it being an evening flight close to Inverness Airport closing time, then they decided to go ahead with it, then got a bit unlucky with delays boarding us from our gate (due to waiting for another Easyjet flight disembarking passengers in our path to our aircraft), then I witnessed the fastest I've ever seen a flight being boarded, closed, taxi'd, safety messages completed, and taken off, and the pilot absolutely "legged" it to try and undercut the 3hr threshold.

Unfortunately for Easyjet, the official arrival time clocked at exactly 3hr 1min late and as it was exhausting waiting so long that late in the evening and having to catch transport into London during the early hours of the morning, I pushed through a claim.

It's now with CEDR...

cauchy

So that you are forewarned, this can be fiddly and EC261 says this:

I'm not an expert, but if there is a short or moderate ATC delay that simply added to a delay for other reasons, then I guess it might not be an exceptional circumstance. However, if that plane had faced a long ATC delay earlier in the day, it seems unlikely to be straightforward.

Often1

ATC seems to be the classic example of an extraordinary circumstance both because there is absolutely no predictive basis and because the decisions are made entirely by others. On the other hand, there are all manner of less than competent people who hold judicial power. I will be interested to learn of precedential authority for the proposition that an ATC-directed delay is other than an extraordinary circumstance.

MB_again

I just received a settlement offer of £175 (instead of the claimed €250 / £225) and accepted it... Hopefully they pay it within the set timescales (20 working days)...

Message says there is no admission of liability and it's purely a goodwill gesture, which seems quite generous offering £175 on a £42 ticket... ATC or not?

cauchy

I'd be really surprised if an airline didn't have some sort of predictive model that estimates the risk of an ATC delay, especially when considering short to medium length delays (long and rare delays might be harder to do). Time of day, day of week, month of the year, and so on, probably give good clues as to the risk level. Dealing with these delays is an inherent part of running an airline and so there's nothing extraordinary about it.

Often1

Of course carriers do. But, that does not change the way one schedules.

Take a simple example of a nonstop flight between two points in the EU. On a clear day with no weather and no ATC issues and where the departure winds are towards the arrival point and the arrival winds are from the departure point, the flying time is 60 minutes. On the other hand, 10% of the time, there is weather adding 30 minutes, ATC adding 15 mintues, and the winds in either or both direction requiring a departure and/or arrival from the "wrong" direction, adding 15-30 minutes.

Putting aside ground time, the time from wheels up to wheels down is somewhere from 60 - 135 minutes, The average time for the flight is thus roughly 90 minutes. If one is the carrier, that is still useless. Should one schedule for 90 minutes, in which case the aircraft arrives 30 minutes early half the time and 30 minutes late half the time?

The trick is knowing when delays will occur, not knowing that they may occur.

As to the knowing when delays occur, air carriers do exactly that. Thus, during winter months, when the Jet Stream is more prevalent over typucal TATL routes, TATL air times are shortened or lengthened depending on direction of travel. On a given day, however, one can't predict any appreciable time in advance what will happen.

This is largely why it makes sense to leave professional commercial aircraft dispatch to licensed dispatchers and not judges of the CJEU.

cauchy

....

These are arguments against getting angry with an airline if a flight is delayed. Clearly, sometimes you get stuck and a delay is unavoidable. But, compensation doesn't apply from the first minute of a delay - it's got to reach 180 minutes first. So with your example above, there's still a lot of leeway for the airline.

At some point, one might conclude "the airline didn't try hard enough" - and perhaps the EU decided that's after a 3 hour delay.

MB_again

The £175 was paid 10 working days after the settlement offer was accepted and bank details provided.