deissi

Attached below are links to i) the District Court judgment and ii) the Court of Appeals judgment.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/d6d84noiob...-3057.pdf?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/fojn63jzyr...76A22.odt?dl=0

exs2

Finnair should be shamed of themselves. Unfortunately this seems to be a way that airlines work. I really wish we would have proper small claims court in Finland instead the rather toothless consumer advocacy office.

Thank you for doing this for rest of us

dera

Glad someone had the balls to go through this.

I don't know if you fly small planes out of EFHF, but if you do, beer's on me!

ffay005

In my NUE case, I was proactive and contacted them before they did anything since I saw on their website that the flight was cancelled. They offered me a bad reroute, I counteroffered a good reroute with OS. They refused. I would have wanted the consumer disputes board to take a stand to the reroute refusal, but they refused to comment on it. I reckon the wording is something like "get to the destination at earliest convenience", which AY didn't follow.

WilcoRoger

Actually there is an European Small Claims procedure for over-the-border issues. In Finland - I think - it is the Helsinki district court that handles such cases. Question is of course domestic cases.

IANAL but there should be some on this board.

jouhka

+1

Keep up the great work

intuition

Only for cross-border disputes. Ie you can file a case against Finnair oy in a local court in your home country as long as it is a EU member state not being Finland.

deissi

Care to post a link on the above small claims procedure for further information?

intuition

Legislation


You should be able to contact the registrator of your local court and ask which court in Finland is the relevant one.


Konsument europa has some advice on how to go about it

intuition

In short, the procedure is

a) fill out a standardized form outlining your claim
b) hand it over to local court
c) local court will ask defendant to reply
d) local court will make decision based on your and defendants paperwork. If defendant does not reply in a rather short time, decision will be based solely on your claim.
e) If your claim wins in local court you will get a legal document which can be sent to any collector service in defendants country who will force defendant to pay


You cannot use a lawyer and court will only charge a small handling fee IIRC.

deissi

Thanks. Sounds very interesting. We would really need this for all issues instead of the useless Consumer Disputes Board.

Edit: just looked at the regulation. While using a lawyer is not mandatory, it is possible, and the loser pays the reasonable costs of the winner. That's a bummer. I don't know how it usually is in small claims courts, since we don't have that here.

FFlash

I will share here my case a while ago. Plane cancelled, no acknowledgement of pax rights offered, only ordered to take a replacement bus. They offered assistance though as a snack voucher and told me to contact Finnair website for claim.

Produced my claim on website, explained my case and asked a compensation within 7 days as stipulated by EC261. I got soon a reply with a case number by which to follow the case on AY website.

After 5 days I got reply saying “thanks for your feedback…give us a few days to investigate…”

Gone the 7 days, I contact them again with a bit stronger tone asking for their position of the case, urging them to reply in 3 days or I need to take stronger actions

After couple of days, they reply “still investigating the case” which sounded to me as they are “inventing” an excuse

After another 2 days, they reply with polite jargon about being very sorry and lying about some technical failure of the plane blaablaa, whereby I should not be eligible for any compensation. “however as Plat member we want to offer you 200€ voucher or 20 000 points as goodwill for the inconvenience”. I accepted the voucher as I thought I can live with that but left me unhappy anyway but I don't have energy to fight.

IMO their explanations were just so rude underestimation of customers perception and judgement of the situation. 20000 points really, c’mon? For the inconvenience? This is in AY’s opinion GOODWILL?!?!? That is just so rude overruling of the pax rights and everyone should fights against that AY policy of mechanistically ignoring/negating all claims as extraordinary/other bullsh… since they will continue that way as they see it will be too much effort for people to fight their rights.

Next time I will try peruutetutlennot.fi which I just saw. I don’t know if any FT’ers have experience with that service?

ffay005

Came across this as well. Haven't (fortunately!) had a chance to test it out, though. But you still can – I reckon the EC261 specifically states that you are entitled to the compensation even if you accept something from the airline. So press your case – but it might be polite to give AY one last chance, though.

FFlash

I don't mind pressing that case but the previous one I had let go, so now I will look if I have my BP left from that previous case, since I read on their website you can apply within 3 years from the incident.

Heck, I am entitled to that. In general, having paid a superexpensive monopoly-priced ticket to get rapidly to a destination meeting instead of taking a cheaper bus/train and the ruined by AY, it is far from fair to be voided any compensation due to ANY circumstances (whether extraordinary or not). Apart from that, I can somewhat understand if you are on leisure trip in Thailand or alike and being put on next day's flight you earn a free extra holiday, then it's all win and different view what is fair...

intuition

I don't think the leisure traveller has any less right to expect arriving on time.
And when it comes to delays on longhauls, it is usually the outboud that is delayed to the next day. So if anything, they steal one day of vaccation, not the other way around.