EU Compensation for cancelled flight
 

I am flying BCN-AMS and AMS-KBP with a 23 hour stopover in AMS. The whole flight is booked as a KLM flight though the second leg is actually on Ukraine Air. I just received notice that the BCN-AMS flight on KL has been cancelled (about 40-hours before the flight) and I have been moved to a flight that leaves BCN about 5-hours earlier. The connecting flight, AMS-KBP has not been impacted so I have a longer layover in AMS.

Questions.

1 -- Am I entitled to EC-261 compensation? I do reach my final destination on-time, but am forced to leave much earlier to do so.

2 -- If I am entitled to compensation would it be based on he flight distance from BCN-AMS (1240KM), BCN-KBP(2430KM) or BCN-AMS-KBP (3060KM).

3 -- KLM was unable to rebook me to the move convenient flight on Transavia. Don't they own this airline? Shouldn't this be an option?

Thanks!

1 - yes.
2 - BCN-KBP, 2430km

The case law now shows that being required to depart a certain number of hours before the originally-scheduled departure time can also invoke the payment of compensation.

KLM in particular are aware of this. My last payout from KLM was in precisely this scenario; I was informed of the cancellation of the final flight of the day from LHR to AMS while on my way to Heathrow, and although they had automatically rebooked me on the first flight the next morning, I managed to get myself rebooked on the flight that was just departing, having just arrived at the airport really early. I submitted a claim and they paid up - despite arriving back in AMS before my original booking was even scheduled to depart LHR.

However, in the present case, it's important to know how far in advance of the flight the customer was informed - if done sufficiently in advance, there is no requirement for compensation.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight...ation_261/2004

Yes, thanks. I was notified about the cancellation at 40-hours before the flight and the change caused me to fly about 4 hours earlier.

I put in for compensation. We will see what they say.

I am still trying to get 400 Euro's from KLM for my cancelled CDG-AMS flight on a KBP-CDG-AMS journey, which was partly cancelled due to the 'power failure' at AMS few months ago. But then, it was a late evening flight I was booked on and not related at all to the incident that happened at the early hours of the day. It caused me to overnight at CDG in a hotel covered by AF/KLM.
KLM denies everything but send me 'out of the blue' a 100 Euro voucher to cover inconveniences...

Any advise how to proceed by myself on this?

Accept and move on. Just because the power outage happened in the morning and your flight was in the evening doesn't mean that the power outage didn't affect your flight.

Agreed and understand that. I am in logistic operations myself so can understand the decisions KLM took in the morning, but cancelling a certain amount of flights in late evening is debatable in my opinion since the airline had time enough to solve their internal problems that might have included staffing the flights. Of course, it is easy to re-direct that back on the power outage (from a company point of view, understandable), but we can debate if the airline did 'everything' to make these flights operate. I am quite sure they didn't do their best, since they cancelled a flight so long in advance.
The main reason for cancellation could have been staff shortage, or even a wrong forecast and decision making earlier in the day.

If your flight was canceled and you were rebooked on an earlier flight, you can ask for compensation. There is still one condition for flight canceled less than 7 days in advance:
Article 5 from EU 261/2004.
(iii) they are informed of the cancellation less than seven days before the scheduled time of departure and are offered re-routing, allowing them to depart no more than one hour before the scheduled time of departure and to reach their final destination less than two hours after the scheduled time of arrival.
If with your re-routing, your arrival time at your final destination does not exceed the scheduled arrival time of the flight originally booked, your carrier may reduce your compensation by 50%.

The question from happy 10345 was: 2 -- If I am entitled to compensation would it be based on he flight distance from BCN-AMS (1240KM), BCN-KBP(2430KM) or BCN-AMS-KBP (3060KM).
In that case, the flight distance for the compensation should be BCN-AMS if I don't make a mistake. We will see the answer from KLM.

Your case is a little different from happy 10345 :
- First, your arrival time at the final destination was delayed.
- Second, the problem was coming from a power failure at AMS airport (external to the company).