Missing connection - what compensation ?
 

Good evening,

My flight got delayed and I missed my flight connection in my PNH-DOH-CDG flight. As a result, I had 7 hours delay at my final destination, and an unexpected 6 hours waiting for the connection flight in Doha.

During the stop, I haven't been offered any food or drink as a compensation, and at the end, no commercial gesture has been offered whatsoever.

I have contacted the client service of Qatar Airways to know the possibilities, but nothing has been given.

I understand that delays can happen and I am happy to continue flying with Qatar for the good service on board.. However, I dont feel fair to have had lost 7 hours in my travel and not offered any attention for the inconvenience..

Thank you for your reply.

Best Regards.

Unless your contract called for compensation for such a delay, you are not due any compensation. Whether QR chooses to make some sort of service gesture is within QR's sole discretion.

You say that you were not "offered" anything. but do not say what happened when you asked. Also, what does your travel insurance provide?

Why was your inbound flight delayed?

Unfortunately don't think you are due any under EU Regulation 261/2004 as that only cover flights departing from EU.

Thank you for the reply.
I was refused any kind of compensation when I asked at my departure point. The reason of the delay was that the aircraft arrived late from its previous flight.

Thanks anyways for the precisions, I know about EU regulations but wasn't familiar with non-EU regulations for non-EU companies.

That's not entirely correct. EU261 also covers flights to and via the EU but only if operated by EU (or EEA) airlines whilst it is any airline (including non-European ones) from the EU/EEA.

In other words, the OP is facing a situation where he/she would have been entitled to compensation if flying on, say, AF, BA and the likes but not on QR, though sadly, no EU airline flies from PNH to my knowledge so that would imply a further codeshared hop to, say SGN or BKK first.

OP is quite clear on his itinerary being PNH-DOH-CDG being operated by QR. The exact itinerary would be PNH-SGN-DOH-CDG and since all none of those flights depart in the EU or are operated by an EU airline to a destination within the EU, EU air passenger rights are inapplicable. And I don't think that there's any other law out there that is as comprehensive as 261/04.

Because most countries would say that anybody who is dependent on the largesse of an air carrier for a sandwich across an extended connection ought to insure the risk rather than having the government enforce it. The EC believed that the US, Canada, Japan, and Australia would follow suit in short order. None did.

Yes, that's exactly my point: OP is not eligible for EC261 compensation, which is not the same as saying that EC261 compensation only applies on flights from the EU. I'm sure that this is what the person I was quoting already knew and had in mind but the phrasing could be badly misunderstood by future readers. We always encourage people to do a search before posting a question that may have been discussed before and many people (myself included!) do it, so other posters might be bumping into this thread by chance in several weeks or months and it is important that they know where they stand,

I don't want to turn totally OT but... it is an interesting point and you may well be right, but intuitively I would not necessarily think so. I think the genesis of EC261 is basically that the EU granted airlines a number of regulatory changes which they had been asking for for months, and the EU (quite sensibly in my view) made it a condition in its internal discussions that this should come with strengthened regulatory protection for passengers. It's worth remembering the context of the first discussions of the regulations, at the time when a number of scandals about Ryanair's treatment of passengers occurred. This revealed gaps in the regulatory regime that were difficult to address because of the strength of the air transportation organised interests, but became possible as part of a 'package deal' which generally made airlines' lives much better. Paradoxically, legacy airlines may have been part to the idea because they were precisely insistent that the FR and U2 of this world were not providing passengers with the same guarantees as they did (at the time they saw low cost airlines as public enemy no1, many still do). So I think the reg has a lot more to do with internal balance, a negotiated compromise that many airlines were actually fully associated with, and a need for the EP to show that they care about the interests of citizens at least as much as that of companies than about expectations of a regulatory spread (which might also have been there but which in my view would not be the key element here).

Interesting.
Out of curiosity, what did EU airlines gained in 2004 (date of EC261/2004) that they did not have before?

There were two biggies that airlines' lobbyists managed to get. First, support for the process of consolidation of the airline industry (2004 is, not entirely anecdotally, the year of the AF-KL merger for instance), and second, for the Commission to champion their preferences in the open skies agreements that the EU and US were negotiating and which concluded in early 2007. I think those two results were enough to swallow a few compromises.

My experience:
I missed a connection NBO - DOH - PSA and I had been diverted to FCO.
My overall delay had been 12 hours
I had 6 hours waiting in DOH airport and they gave me ORYX Lounge access after my insistent pressing.
Once at home, I sent an email complaining and at the beginning they gave nothing; with a second upset email I got 3.000 QMiles + reimburse of my expenses upon receipt.
At that time I was only Burgundy