Interesting case here - http://www.globes.co.il/news/article...did=1001207379

The Israeli small claims court awarded damages of 26000NIS to a family that bought tickets with Air France from Israel to the US, which also included some internal US flights on Alaska airlines. The Alaska airlines flight for the beginning of their return leg to Israel was delayed which caused them to miss their Air France flights. Air France rebooked them on British Airways and they reached Israel with a delay of 11 Hours. The family sued Air france for compensation under Israel's laws, but Air France said that since the delay was caused by another carrier that Air France should not be liable, even though the tickets were isseud and purchased through Air France.

The small claims court judge ruled that the family was eligible for compensation under Israeli law of 3070NIS per passenger for "cancellation" of a flight over 4500km, and 2000NIS per passenger punitive damages for refusing the pay out the compensation in the first place.

While it sounds nice that a family won so much compensation here, this sets a dangerous precedent that could cause flight tickets to Israel to increase in price in the long run or cause the airlines to stop issuing connecting tickets with other airlines when Israel is the origin or destination.

I'm curious to know if the final destination had been Paris and the family was 11 hours late due to the delayed Alaska air flight would they have been eligible under the EU rule 261?

It won't cause a ripple. If there were an volume, it might. But, AF likely pays out more to people who slip on a wet floor boarding their aircraft at JFK than this issue will ever cause.

No, Alaska airlines is neither a EU carrier, nor was it operating a flight from the EU, EU261 is all about the operating carrier rather than the marketing one, though you can never know what will happen in a court...

No. EC 261/2004 only applies to the operating carrier, e.g. AS, and then only on EU carriers or flights departing the EU. As AS is the carrier causing the delay, no compensation under the Regulation.

Don't worry too much about a nothing small claims court numpty judge. Weird stuff happens every day in one courtroom or another somewhere in the world.

True, however, the UK Court of Appeals did recently rule that non-EU carriers operating outside the EU are liable on connecting journeys that are delayed (i.e. fly LHR-JFK-ATL where AA causes you to be delayed by more than 3 hours in arriving at ATL).

Not exactly the same, but the courts are expanding the rules somewhat.

If AA operated the entire journey then yes, and there have been several such rulings I think, but this at least falls under "departing from an EU member state".

"Not exactly the same" is a vast understatement. The facts and the legal discussion are entirely different and has absolutely nothing to do with this issue.

All the case does is provide that on a departure from the EU, a non-EU carrier remains liable for delay compensation as determined at the final ticketed destination no matter that the delay on the EU departure segment was not sufficient to trigger compensation. Thus, on AA flying LHR-JFK-LAX, a one hour delayed arrival into JFK causing a misconnect resulting in a 5-hour delay into LAX is measured at LAX not JFK. At LAX, the 5-hour delay results in compensation of EUR 600. At JFK, the compensation would be EUR 0.

More fundamentally, the EU and its courts simply lack jurisdiction and authority over the facts and the law in the situation.