Maestro Ramen

He is a she. Let's remember that women are CEOs too!

Londonlouis

Was more that the name sounded masculine to me, but probably should've googled first!

Storizontal Habilizer

A recent flight with KLM (AMS-HEL), KLM cancels the flight roughly 18 hours prior and I get rebooked to Finnair who smoothly fly me over to Helsinki, but over 4 hours late of my original arrival time.

Sending in the compensation claim to KLM who say that their cancellation was due to extreme weather conditions (they wrote "snow in Helsinki") and thus I'm not entitled to any compensation.

I find this ridiculous as this KLM flight was one of the only cancellations on that day, and given that the cancellation call was made so well in advance, I think it was purely due to operational reasons.

Two questions:
1) Which service would you use to ge the flight history of all arrivals into Helsinki on the day in question? A paid version of Flightradar24?
2) The burden of proof for extreme weather conditions lies with KLM, right? Can I demand written proof on this?

TIA!

cvision

1) Flightaware free should work, use Flighradar to gobble up some flight numbers.
2) No harm in asking/demanding though they'll probably find a way to say "no".
Probably best to take it to arbitration now.

Storizontal Habilizer

I'll check out Flightaware and compile some statistics from that day, to back up my response. Thanks, cvision, appreciate the input.

Warakian

Regarding your 2nd question, I have some experience with that:

I had a case where KLM was claiming extreme weather conditions, yet while in the plane the pilot literally told us "we don't understand why we can't take off, weather is great here and at the destination airport." So I asked KLM to show me some kind of proof that the weather conditions were "extreme" as they claimed. I literally got back a reply that went "while we are fully capable of showing you proof that the weather conditions were bad, we are not obliged to and therefore we choose not to do that."

Take that as you will, I was deeply displeased with that answer.

Maestro Ramen

As you should be, since they are legally required to:


3.An operating air carrier shall not be obliged to pay compensation in accordance with Article 7, if it can prove that the cancellation is caused by extraordinary circumstances which could not have been avoided even if all reasonable measures had been taken.

Fabo.sk

They do not technically have to provide the proof to the pax, I'm afraid. Of course they would have to show it to a court if it came to that. Might be worth it or not, depending on your route (if touching UK, MCOL makes it very easy to sue).
A good claims agency will go as far as suing.

KLBGO

My flight from EU to Asia is delayed. Will i loose the compensation if I initiate to rebook via KLM support myself, despite arriving more than five hours late? I.e. will the compensation only be valid if KLM rebooks me on their initiative?

atflyer

Not sure why you should rebook yourself - you either arrive delayed and if you miss a connection they should rebook you, and then you usually can ask for options. If you then are late over EU261 boundaries and the delay is not caused due to exceptional circumstances the airline cannot control, compensation is due. Once got a message Friday dinner time my flight next day went tech and was cancelled, would miss my connection in Paris, called the plat line directly, asked to be rebooked to be on a later for me in fact more convenient schedule that seemed the only alternative available (which allowed me to leave home at a normal time instead very early), arrived over 4 hours late, and got compensation.

NB maybe a mod can move this to the EU261 thread?

Billyfergus

Word of advice is to keep all evidence and try and get paper boarding passes instead of electronic ones in case these are asked when claiming via a third party company. Note down times and any announcement made by pilot as you will probably find Sky Team customer care will deny your compensation claim as a matter of course in the hope you do not take it any further.

I had an incident two weeks ago when our connecting flight left the gate late, on its way to the runway the pilot parked up and over the tannoy told us " that they had a technical issue with the plane that hopefully could be fixed without going back to the gate". When we did eventually take off and land, we only had 10 minutes to catch our next flight and obviously did not make it. I put in the compensation claim and it was denied and closed by "customer services team" as "delay was due to air traffic control".

Obviously not happy with this so called Platinum Service Line on Thursday. She told me that probably what happened was that customer care person was aware that there had been ATC delays on the day of our flight from CDG and just thought our flight was one of those caught up with this and therefore closed our claim. PSL lady took all the info and she said she would escalate to a higher management level and for me to wait 72 hours before doing anything else.

If this fails I will probably send a PM to another poster on this forum () as currently my confidence level in AF/KLM/Sky Team is exceedingly low.

Billyfergus

Well another incident today of totally incompetence and utter ignorance from the KLM "customer care" team. As some might have seen on another thread, my good lady, who paid for a full business ticket months ago for the weekend away we just had in Gdansk (which is lovely by the way) was denied her business class seat when we got to Gdansk airport yesterday. She (and me on a separate booking) checked in online and my wife picked and got the electronic boarding pass for seat 2D. However, when we went to pick up our paper boarding passes (which we always do now due past issues with claims) check in lady told my wife she was now seat 9F and she was not business class but economy. Called PL and they said one of their colleagues had made a mistake but she could not fix it just there so she started a compensation claim for us. She asked to update when the email from her came through and we did. Only 3 out of 8 business class seats occupied.

This evening when we arrived back in the UK we got the reply from KLM "customer service" closing the claim saying they complied with the rules and blaming bad weather in Amsterdam (see below). Really had enough of them so it will be one call to the PL to see if they can assist and if no joy its straight to the MCOL in the UK.

"Dear Mrs Billyfergus,

Thank you for your message. First and foremost I hope you are well and safe. I am sorry that your flight from Amsterdam to Aberdeen on 15 April 2024 was cancelled because of Weather reasons (reduced runway capacity due to maintenance and strong gusty winds in AMS).

This situation is regarded as an extraordinary circumstance and therefore the compensation set by the EC Regulation 261/2004 does not apply.

Also, we have complied with our obligations to limit as much as possible the inconvenience caused by this circumstance; therefore, I cannot respond favourably to your request.

We look forward to welcoming you on board our flights again soon and hope that in future everything will be to your entire satisfaction.

Best regards,
Ronald Justin Gache
KLM Customer Care Assistant"

Fabo.sk

It's pretty much an auto-reply. Just write back that you are requesting downgrade compensation not cancellation compensation and should be enough to get someone to actually look at it.

Billyfergus

I actually called up the platinum line yesterday (on behalf of my wife) and had a very pleasant conversation with the gent there. He could not have apologised enough and confirmed there had been an error made (and continued) by some of his his colleagues. End of the day, my wife had received all her XP's plus an (additional 15 as well - she got 120 instead of 105) as well as confirmation that the business/economy ticket issue was now with the refund department for processing. She also has an amount of miles credited to her account which does not tie any of the tickets/flights she had. We wont push this any further incase they have made a mistake and they try to take the XP's/ miles back

Another interesting thing from yesterday - I am a member of a local facebook group here about flight delay / cancellations. Yesterday, one post was made by another passenger who was on the same cancelled flight as us from AMS-ABZ on Monday night. Poster stated that when the captain came into cabin to give us an update over the tannoy, he said he had actually been told by his management that our flight had just been cancelled as our aircraft was required to be in AMS for an early morning flight. He had earlier told us he was either going to wait on the plane with all passengers until either the crew run out of hours or the ATC computer issue was fixed. Personally I am sceptical about this qualifying for any compensation and KLM will just blame weather/ATC problems but might give it a try, after all it does not cost anything to claim.

irishguy28

Were you not on this flight and did you not hear this latter announcement?