IBERIA flouting EU261. Any recommendations or success?

[Scarlett]

I’ve lodged my claim against Iberia with ‘Flightright’, one of the no win, no fee mobs that pursue the airlines. It’s based in Germany.

All the firms/agencies doing this seem to have standard rates of 30-35% of the compensation if they convince the airline to pay up and then another 10-15% if they have to take court action against the airline to enforce it.

Step one was to provide them all the info about the flight and a copy of my confirmed ticket.

Step two appears to be they are now repeating exactly what I’ve already done chasing IB. This can take up to three months.

Step three then appears to be they’ll take enforcement (legal) action against IB under EU261 legislation and that can take many months to over a year.

Even if I only get €300 of the possible 600 I should be eligible for under the legislation it’s better than more stonewalling by IB. Plus, I don’t become part of the statistics of not bothering to pursue the matter, that IB seem to rely on.

After 5 months of IB ignoring my claim for EU261 compensation and 3 months of waiting for Flightright to get a response I was not expecting this:
Flightright have closed the case. Done.

Apparently there were weather delays ‘somewhere’ and they don’t think they can prosecute my case.
It’s an interesting twist as I don’t recall IB ever mentioning anything about the weather on the delay, or the flight. The inbound aircraft was late and then instead of a 30-40 minute turn it took closer to 90 minutes. Weather at departure point of LIS was okay. Weather at (mis-)connection point MAD was okay.

What I did think at the time was that because we were late, eurocontrol or LIS or MAD traffic flow controllers may have delayed us further, but neither IB, nor Flightright have mentioned that as the reason.

So no compensation for me. Guess I should just be lucky that at least Covermore travel insurance reimbursed some of my expenses up to their claim limit.

Haven’t learnt my lesson; still booking separate ticket convoluted routings…

 

[avlawyer82]

I can certainly sense the frustration with the EU (and UK since departing the EU) regulations in respect to airline compensation. I have also had to go through the experience but managed to to secure compensation. I wonder whether it might be worth setting out some thoughts/templates/ for use? I know that some claim's companies won't want these be handed out for free. Sounds like a gap in the market that these can be delivered cheaper given that the templates/etc are easily drafted and that we know some of the stonewalling tactics that can be used.

I'd love to hear from all the frequent flyers out there who are having difficulties - to share their experiences so as to compile a database that might assist in having to get these resolved more quickly (and in a more fair manner).

I have been following the calls for something similar in Australia. I know that this has been resisted thus far on the basis that the cost of such compensation will simply be added to fares in Australia and thus would make the cost of travel more expensive/prohibitive.

 

[avlawyer82]

After 5 months of IB ignoring my claim for EU261 compensation and 3 months of waiting for Flightright to get a response I was not expecting this:
Flightright have closed the case. Done.

Apparently there were weather delays ‘somewhere’ and they don’t think they can prosecute my case.
It’s an interesting twist as I don’t recall IB ever mentioning anything about the weather on the delay, or the flight. The inbound aircraft was late and then instead of a 30-40 minute turn it took closer to 90 minutes. Weather at departure point of LIS was okay. Weather at (mis-)connection point MAD was okay.

What I did think at the time was that because we were late, eurocontrol or LIS or MAD traffic flow controllers may have delayed us further, but neither IB, nor Flightright have mentioned that as the reason.

So no compensation for me. Guess I should just be lucky that at least Covermore travel insurance reimbursed some of my expenses up to their claim limit.

Haven’t learnt my lesson; still booking separate ticket convoluted routings…

Certainly can be tricky to navigate. Some of the EU judgments on it have left the door open that simply claiming weather difficulties isn't sufficient - but usually may be very persuasive in order to avoid compensation. see the German decision at - https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:62007CJ0549 (see e.g.. paragraph 21 and 22 on page 14).

The lack of proper reasoning is another point that usually comes up and there are some points that could be put to that as well. I guess it comes down to the effort that one puts to securing it. If you managed to recover at least some of this via travel insurance - a slight win???

 

[MEL_Traveller]

I was under the impression - dunno how accurate - is that the claims companies have access to the flight data systems, so they can actually go in and see the real reason for the delay.

For a claims company to therefore decide not to take up the case…when it’s worth at least 30% to them… means it’s probably not worth pursuing.

I think for most people it’s pretty straight forward… you (a) make the claim yourself to see if you can get the full compensation, failing that you try (b) a cla8ms company, If they say ‘no’ that’s probably the end.