Together with my wife we flew to Sicily for a holiday. We booked a direct flight Zurich – Catania on 28th May 2015 and back on 4th June 2015 with Air Berlin. On the way to Catania we had to fly at 6:20am and land at 8:20am.
On 15th May (13 days before the flight) we received an email with this content:
Dear Sir or Madam,
You will find the document relating to your booking 3BGC4I in attachment.
Regards,
Ihr Service Team airberlin group
There was an attached document saying that:
due to urgent operational requirements a flight change could not be avoided. Please consider the new flight times as stated below.
The change was that we were now flying via Vienna and instead of a 2 hour flight landing in the morning we had a 6 hour flight landing at 3:10pm.
The email was badly formatted so my first thought was it was a scam. I called Air Berlin to ask them if that was true. I had to choose what I am calling for and I chose that I have a question about my reservation. After waiting for some time on the line, I got to talk with a lady in Germany. She confirmed the change but was absolutely rude. I asked her how the airline would compensate us for this delay at which she became even less helpful and practically told me to go to hell or write them a written complaint. I was furious because I knew passengers in the EU have rights in such cases although I had never needed them and on top she was talking to me as if I was a criminal. She also told me that I should not be calling “sales” for such information (while I specifically chose that I have a question about my reservation in the phone menu).
I googled the passenger rights and found that they are based on the REGULATION (EC) No 261/2004. Also I found that for that type of rerouting and delay we were entitled to a compensation of 250 EUR per person. I found a complaint form on the Air Berlin web site and sent them a request to pay that compensation. Three days later I received a standardized email saying that they are sorry and are happy to give us a 50 EUR discount on our next Air Berlin flight. That was ridiculous: there is a European regulation saying that they have to pay 250 EUR per passenger and they were trying to not only exchange it for a “discount” but also to reduce the amount to only 10% of the defined one. Can you imagine how much they save by doing that to all their passengers?
Of course I wrote them that I reject their offer and request the full compensation according to the regulation. I quoted the regulation and sent them a list of links to companies that deal especially with cases where the airlines don’t want to pay the compensation and I warned them that I will search my rights through such a company or a lawyer if they didn’t pay. I got no response from them for 3 weeks.
During this time we flew to Catania (via Vienna) and then back. On 2nd June, two days before the return flight, we received again an email saying that there would be delay of four hours. We went to an absolutely full Catania airport with all flights having delays, our having one of the biggest – 10 hours! So that was 6 hours more than the one they informed us about. Catania airport is small, almost no shops, only one coffee place and it had thousands of people. The longest line was the one for Air Berlin (all flights) and we waited for 2 hours to check in. When we reached the counter we requested to get some food (also defined as required compensation in the above regulation) and were refused “because we just came in”. I showed the guy the line which had probably about 300 people on it at that time and asked him if he thought we really just arrived. He remained firm and we didn’t get anything. I was ready to write another complaint but in the evening I read that they found a WWII bomb close to the airport and closed it for a couple of hours in the morning to detonate it. How Air Berlin knew about that and informed us in advance is beyond me. Or maybe they were planning to delay the flight anyway and it was a coincidence. Anyway, a closure of a couple of hours doesn’t explain why the flight was delayed 10 hours but the regulation says that if the airline is not responsible for the delay they are not liable and I am sure Air Berlin would hide behind that even if they caused the delay. So I let that one go.
Going back to the flight to Catania I waited for three weeks after my complaint. During that time I only got an email saying that they had a lot to do and will answer when they answer. I didn’t want to wait so I checked several companies dealing with similar cases. I tried to enter our flight details in a couple of them and the one that had the possibility to enter all our details (including the change of the routing, the change of the airline as we flew with Niki instead of Air Berlin and the change in times) was Flightright. I entered all the data and received a letter of attorney I had to fill in and sign. After that they took care of things. Their conditions are: they send an official letter to the airline and give it 14 days to react. If they don’t (which Air Berlin didn’t) they give them one more week out of good will. If there is still no reaction, your case is being closely checked and if it is legally OK they prosecute it with a lawyer. Their fee is 25% (including VAT). Today I got 375 EUR on my account so the case is closed for me.
As a result our vacation was cut one day short (flight to Catania) and I had to work one night after we came back because the day of the return journey was completely destroyed and I had taken obligations to deliver some work. So I needed holiday almost immediately after my holiday ;)
After this case I am wondering how can it be that airlines don’t follow European regulations? Why are they not fined (and hugely fined) for that? I would like to see them fined so much that the next time they prefer to pay to every passenger immediately without asking questions. For once it would be nice to see the “little person” being taking care of by the EU.
The fact that there are dozens (if not more) companies that can create great web sites, hire lawyers, prosecute the airlines and make profit out of this means that this happens all the time. However I assume it is still cheaper for the airlines to play this game and hope that at least some passengers will not seek their rights and they can save on their behalf. That’s why I hope to be alive to see one day big companies being fined for such behavior until they either learn to appreciate their customers or go out of business. I probably won’t though…
You should write a formal complaint to FOCA (BAZL).
I don’t know how exactly they handle it with foreign AOCs. With Swiss AOC, they tend to formally dismiss the complaint immediately, but then during the next AOC renewal basically strongarm the AOC holder to settle these complaints, and usually quite favorably for the complaining party.
I’ve used services such as flightright.com quite a lot – and happily.
I was just going to say www.refund.me is a bit cheaper in that their commission is only 15% for the same service, but they appear to have changed that and adopted the standard 25%.
Patrick wrote:
I’ve used services such as flightright.com quite a lot
But why should you? Should you sue everyone you work with just to make them follow the law? Should one be sued in order to start halting in front of a red light on the street because otherwise one doesn’t do it, just to try to avoid it because there is no police around?
But why should you? Should you sue everyone you work with just to make them follow the law?
I see your point. While I don’t expect airlines to start shoving out their money to anyone they think might have a claim, they should at least have the decency to pay out what a passenger is legally entitled to without making a fuss when the passengers MAKES the claim. AirBerlin is known for not doing that and that shadows somewhat my image of what I generally regard as a fairly decent airline.
Having said that, it’s great that these “no win – no fee”-kind of services exist. Whenever I get a serious delay (and I had lots of them over the past year) I’ll just upload the stuff to their site, takes less than 5 minutes and in about 50% of the cases, I’ll have a couple of hundred euros on my account a few weeks or months later.
Patrick wrote:
they think might have a claim
In a perfect world they don’t have to think. The regulations say clearly: if the departure was not on time and the arrival was delayed more than 2 hours and the distance between the departure and destination is below 1700 nm and there was no natural disaster or other similar event the compensation is 250 EUR (the numbers may not be correct but the rest is). This can be done in a simple “if” statement of a computer application which can decide: “oh, we are at fault, we have to pay according to the law”. It’s a one day programmer’s job to automate it and remove any kind of “thinking”. But that’s in a perfect world ;)
Fair play to you for seeing this through.
I had a similar story many years ago, with RyanAir. I was coming back from Bratislava to Dublin. Their inbound aircraft diverted to Budapest due to fog (while most others either landed or held for a while and then landed).
In order to “rebook” I had to queue from 10am to 3:30pm. When I reached the front of the queue, the only options open to me were
a) make my own way to Budapest and they’d get me a fight home in 2 days,
b) stay in Bratislava and they’d get me a flight home in 5 days.
All costs in the mean time were mine! They refused to even assist with finding accomodation, and claimed to be totally unaware of the EU passenger rights leglisation.
I refused both, and all they wanted to offer was a letter stating that I agreed to cancel the flight and accept a refund (which I wouldn’t take).
In the end they decided that they would open an informal standby list for the flight the next day, and I took that option and got home the next day.
When I got home I complained and asked for my costs to be met (they were minor approx €100). They had a very complicated system which required you to submit your claim via FAX only! No postal address, no phone number and no email.
They wrote back stating that they couldn’t accept my costs because it was a weather delay (this doesn’t affect the validity of a claim for assistance) and refunded the cost of the flight (which was only €20!). I told them that I wasn’t accepting that, and offered to send it back to them if they’d tell me where to send it, and restated my claim. They refused point blank.
So I complained to the Aviation Regulator, who told me that as the flight originated in Slovakia I’d have to make my claim to the Slovakian authority. So I did that. They said that they agreed my claim was valid, but that I’d have to complain to the Irish regulator in order to extract compensation as RyanAir were based in Dublin!
So I wrote back to the Irish regulator and they said I’d have to go to court for it. It wasn’t worth going to court for such a small amount (in hindsight I should have complained to the small claims court). Instead I contacted my Euro MP and asked what the point of this leglisation was if passengers had to get involved in international aviation regulators and court cases to make a claim under the regulation? He made some enquiries (which just confirmed that I needed to take a court case in Ireland) and promised to ask for a review of the operation of the leglisation.
A year or two later, the Islandic volcano issue arose, and I saw in the press that RyanAir were taking the same tack and point blank refused to pay any compensation. But apparently the EU at that point got upset with them (now they were making a mockery of the leglisaton in a very public way), and threatened to pull their operator licence. A few claims were brought to the court too (and won). I believe that they are much more compliant these days, but they have to be now.
Looks like others are still playing the same dumb games.
Crazy situation. I always thought Air Berlin was a good company because it was German and in spite of being “low cost” (which it is not that much any more). Obviously they are trying hard to cut corners as well. However I am absolutely not surprised by your story of RyanAir. I’ve heard also awful stories about how they treat their pilots and crew.
Vladimir wrote:
I always thought Air Berlin was a good company because it was German
A company that’s been posting losses for every single year since its incorporation can hardly be considered a good company. It’s owned by Etihad these days, they thought they can use it to get European slots through the back door but it didn’t work out. Now it’s only political interest to have two national carriers that keeps this company alive…
