Swiss airlines have cancelled my return flight to geneva from the uk twice today. The flight I will now get means I will miss work. As I am paid by the day am I able to claim my lost days pay from them ? This happened when I returned from America once and someone mentioned there was legislation for this, though I did not pursue it at the time.
Thanks.
http://www.swiss.com/web/EN/general/...rticle_09.aspx I'd be interested to know what the 'Unless otherwise specified by the Convention' covers.
My understanding, which may be wrong, is that it does allow for compensation for costs directly resulting from a cancellation, but that the interpretation of this is currently in the courts and you have zero chance of getting anything.
The British AUC (Air Users Council) have a website in English explaining the rules. Note that Switzerland counts as what they refer to as an "EU country" here, and the rules in Switzerland are the same as in the UK. http://www.auc.org.uk/
You really have to weigh up the effort involved in dealing with this compared with what you will get. I have personal experience dealing with Swiss, and I actually involved the AUC who agreed with my claim and dealt with it for me. Swiss simply refused to respond to the letters from either me or the AUC, and the end result was nothing.
I really think you need to write this off, and if the lost costs matter to you, you should take out travel insurance in the future that specifically covers this, if you can find any.
As a general rule, if the cancellation was due to an act-of-God (eg, heavy snowfall) or other circumstances outside of the airline's control, you are entitled to nothing more than a refund of your unused ticket price (if you choose not to travel) or a reasonable duty-of-care if you choose to travel on another flight. This means that the airline needs to provide you with meals, drinks, and hotel accomodation as required.
If the cancellation is due to something under the airline's control, like a mechanical problem, you are entitled to the same duty-of-care as listed above plus cash compensation (of up to EUR600, depends on length of schedule flight + length of delay/cancellation).
The rules are complicated and getting compensation is not straight-forward, as many test cases have been put forward in court. Best thing to do is to use a company like EUClaim to lodge a claim with the airlines.
But in any case, you'll not be compensated for lost working time / wages. The compensation follows strict guidelines outlined in Articles 7-9 of the Act.
However, I still think that the reference to the "convention" in the second post refers to the Montreal Convention. This is a separate piece of international legislation that does actually say that carriers may be liable for damages caused by their delay. However, it doesn't apply if the airline is not at fault i.e. if it was a weather related delay or similar, and I have never read of anyone successfully claiming under it in any circumstances. So it's a bit irrelevant really.
If you're really bored you can read it by following the link in my first post and clicking through.
The legislation demands that you get a voucher for a free meal, and in case of an overnight stay a free overnight stay in a hotel.
And be careful in regard to insurance coverage. All insurance companies will refuse any idea to cover against losses of the indirect nature. Do not forget that there are businessmen who due to delays of some hours lose business to the millions.
I had the same from London city yesterday, got to the airport at 6.30 to see the flight had been cancelled to Basel due to Technical issues with the aircraft, seems odd the Geneva and Zurich flights were also cancelled. We got shipped off to Heathrow for a BA flight, but no meals or drinks were offered, we eventually took off from Heathrow at 16.30hrs. Having looked at the regulations theoretically compensation should be payable at the rates determined in the regulations quoted below, in addition there should be a meal and hotel allowance given should a delay be longer than the specified time limit. However this can be dependant on whether it is your outbound or inbound flight, ie, if the delay is substantial on your outbound flight then it is deemed you can return home and therefore a hotel allowance is unlikely to be given unless you have travelled a long way, if it is on your inbound flight ie. you are stranded abroad then the hotel allowance is more likely however most airlines will only cover reasonable costs and unfortunately they do not specifiy what is reasonable (Ryanair and BMI were chastised for this after the volcano issues in April).
What annoys me is that you have to ask for the text if your flight is delayed or cancelled, if you dont ask I am not sure what you are then entitled to. From what I have read it is very difficult to obtain the set compensation amounts for a delay due to the stays put in place by the UK courts when a few of the carriers contested the legal position, I believe this is due to be heard by the European courts in about a years time. For a cancellation it should be paid and other hearings have determined mechanical failure in itself is not an 'extraodinary circumstance' as some airlines will quote however if that mechanical failure is a result of an 'extraordinary circumstance' then payment of compensation will not happen.
There is a lot of information on the moneysavingexpert.com site in the forums, but, reading most stories dont plan on spending the compensation soon as it sounds extremely unlikely it will ever be paid.
For me I plan to write to Swiss with a strong letter of complaint, I have noticed a steady decline in the quality of their service over the last 6 months, flights are now frequently delayed, after the volcano issues they offered no support even suggesting that they would only move my initially cancelled flights even though I had 6 more booked after them that were dependant on me being in the right part of the world to be able to use the tickets, and finally a 12 hour delay yesterday with again no support, whats ironic is that I was 10 minutes late for a flight two weeks ago (having already flown with them at least 50 times this year) and they charged me £200 for the privilage of rebooking with them for a later flight, seems very one way to me.
Swiss have been pretty good to me normally and the lady on the desk was as helpful as she could be but I have to say my trick was as soon as I found out the 11.50 was axed we were all airside by then and I legged it to departures again and sprinted into the (very short queue) and got the space on the 7.30. About 5 minutes later the queue was tailing off down the hall and the wait in it would have been hours.
It's still patently unfair that you are not compensated for these things. Much more than the flight itself it is the financial loss incurred as I am a contractor and only paid if I turned up.
It was quite a day though, I have to say.
To be honest I think the bit extra with Swiss is well worth it as both Sunday and Monday evening, the scheduled Swiss flights managed to leave Manchester but the Easy jet flights were canceled.
Forgot to mention the destination airport is Zurich.
I agree with you in that Swiss are generally good, however, when things go wrong they are woefully inadequate, not necessarily from a service perspective but more from a communication angle. I recieved no notification of the cancellation (if I had I would not have spent £45 getting to city airport for 6.30) and as previously said it seems odd to me that when all the swiss airports aswell as city airport were open that all flights were cancelled. Whilst I am not a generally a theorist it does seem odd so many flights were cancelled on the same day (especially after the movement of wikileaks to a .CH address).
Putting this aside though they have a legal obligation under EU law to compensate and extend a duty of care to their customers which they are clearly failing to do, basic elements like meal allowances were not offered, luckily for me I was travelling with a colleague who had BA lounge access so my day was not that uncomfortable (if we had of been in terminal 1 I have swiss lounge access which we would have used instead), however also in the queue were a family with two small two children who also had to endure a 10 hour delay with no kind of compensation at all, just left to wander the concourse of terminal 5 for all those hours.
WTF?
So I scanned in all hotel bills, credit card receipts etc. and sent them off yesterday. The amount is touching on 650 CHF for 5 days hotel accomodation (didn't claim for food, but asked the question is this is possible).
Got a reply this morning, that they're willing to pay 250 CHF per head (for the misses and I) and they're not willing to pay anymore.
Do I have a chance to squeeze them a little, or should I cut and run with this?
Why should the airlines companies give money back to their customers for a natural disaster or weather condition out of their control? I find it great if they do, but I would understand if they don't.
If your house is destroyed from a natural disaster, insurances are not covering what it calls ''Act of God'' (in french).
So is it under the airlines responsability to refund people who had been touch by cancellations due to natural circonstances?
How does it work?