Distance between LHR and ARN [type 1 EC261/2004?]
 

I just received a reply rom SAS denying my EC261/2004 request. The reason was

"Kindly note that according to EU regulation 261/2004 compensation is paid out when delay is three hours or more. In your case delay is less than three hours (2h 05min), therefore we are sorry to say but cannot honor your claim. We do hope that you will choose SAS for your upcoming flights as your valued costumer....."

I thought the shortest, great circle distance between LHR and ARN is 792 nm, 1466 km, so I thought type 1 in Article 8 in EC261/2004 should apply?

You are correct.

SK may going by the IATA published distances by city pairs. These are not exactly equivalent to the great circle mapping for the city pairs. JAL uses the IATA distances, and as a result Tokyo to London is a longer flight than Tokyo to Paris, and both of them (or all four of them as Tokyo can mean both Haneda and Narita) are longer than the great circle track. I would imagine that as the IATA numbers are an industry standard that would be accepted as a calculation base if that is where the problem come from.

All that being said, I would query SK why they set ARN to LHR as a category two flight if it was me.

Its 863mi(1388 KM) as per IATA:

Interesting, I was not aware of this. I guess it does make sense to have some official/standard distance between city pairs.

Regardless of how they count the distance, whether it's LON-STO or LHR-ARN, your flight is type 1 (1500km or less). The eligibility for compensation depends on whether you were rerouted or whether you took the original flight which was delayed. If you were rerouted and, in case of type 1 flight, arrived 2+ hrs later than originally scheduled you would be entitled to 250 eur compensation. This amount is halved if the arrival time is with a delay of less than 2 hrs. If you took the original flight and arrived with a delay of less than 3 hours, you would not be entitled to any compensation, only to duty of care whilst delayed.

Just out of curiosity, what are the various numbers apart from the distance?

Strangely enough IATA sets it shorter than the great circle distance. Interesting.

See page 6 of this pdf: http://www.amadeus.com/pk/documents/...%20Pricing.pdf

Usually a shorter TPM is better for you when you try to squeeze in segments under a MPM limit...

Thank you :)