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I submitted an EC261 compensation claim to EasyJet. They responded in a few days, saying that they need to verify the reason why the flight was cancelled, which may take up to two weeks. Three weeks later there was no response, so I responded to their email asking for an update. No response. After four weeks, I asked again. No response.

What recourse do I have in this case?

Some more details:

  • The ticket was not bought by myself. I believe it is the passenger who is entitled to compensation not the original buyer of the ticket. Is this correct?

  • The flight was originally delayed by multiple hours. During this time, the airport staff told passengers (who were kept at the gate for 2 hours, after checking boarding passes) several times that this is because of an engine problem (EasyJet's responsibility). There is no written record of this. After 6 hours of waiting the flight was finally cancelled due to bad weather (not their responsibility, but this wouldn't have happened without the original delay).

  • The flight was from France to the UK

I would not normally pursue compensation, but in this case I was (and still am) extremely upset. I was travelling to a job interview, and I believe that the delay contributed to the outcome of the interview in the end. EasyJet handled the situation very badly. There was no EasyJet staff at the airport past the security barrier to ask for information. They only communicated in mass SMS/email. Outside the security barrier they did have a counter, but people there would not help at all, saying that I need to call customer service, which of course is a paid service and they never pick up. They refused to put me on another flight the next day, saying that I would have to book it myself after refunding the original ticket. This caused a multi-day delay in my travel.

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  • If your flight was from the UK you can contact the Civil Aviation Authority caa.co.uk
    – user16259
    Commented Jan 12, 2018 at 10:11
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    Please add the country you were traveling from and to. For certain countries (see the answer already present) there are specific organizations you can contact, providing service free of charge (opposed to certain companies which keep some of the money won in case of success). Commented Jan 12, 2018 at 10:14
  • @martin.koeberl Thank you. The flight was France -> UK, but my competence in French is not sufficient to submit a complaint in that language.
    – Rist
    Commented Jan 12, 2018 at 11:46
  • Did you try to contact them with an other channel? If it was email, use the phone. emails often are not so reliable (on both sides). Commented Jan 12, 2018 at 12:29
  • @GiacomoCatenazzi I responded to their own email, which already had a case number in its subject. I assumed that this must be read by a human eventually. I don't want to phone them because they keep me on hold forever and that costs money (higher rates than for a regular call). I think I should give them more time before doing anything drastic, but it is getting annoying and I wanted to know if there are other options in case they prove entirely unresponsive.
    – Rist
    Commented Jan 12, 2018 at 17:21

1 Answer 1

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Yes, EC261 compensation goes to the passenger rather than the purchaser of the ticket. The links below persuaded my HR department to back down very fast when they questioned this.

europa.eu, eur-lex.europa.eu, ec.europa.eu, www.refund.me

My experience of claiming under EC261 is that airlines make it as difficult as possible for passengers to claim and you will need to get to the point of setting a court date before they pay up. I do not have the time or will to go through this process and so I used the most prominent UK law firm that specialises in helping passengers claim EC261 compensation. They took a sizeable (30% iirc) proportion of my compensation as their fee, but if I hadn't used them, I wouldn't realistically have got anything.

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    I wrote to the airline. Got nowhere. Wrote to CAA and then got a letter from the airline backing down and asking where to send the money.
    – user16259
    Commented Jan 12, 2018 at 15:31

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