Flight data & determination – a must for flight delay compensation success
Flight delay compensation is always a hot topic and it heated up again recently with the ruling from the European Court of Justice on the Van der Lans Vs KLM case. We are pleased that more and more air passengers are aware of EU Regulation 261 and their rights if they are delayed by over three hours. But it seems that many passengers still have to make a lengthy journey when it comes to getting recompense for their delay.
Delayed passengers – the long road to compensation
EUclaim recently conducted a customer survey to see just what journey our delayed passengers had taken before they contacted EUclaim to assist with their claim for compensation. Out of over 200 respondents, 71% had initially contacted their airline direct using their own or off the shelf template letters provided by consumer groups, this was followed by 12% who approached moneysavingexpert.com, 11% were in touch with the CAA and 8% who went to Which?, the UKs leading consumer association. All worth a try and in some cases an off the shelf template letter to an airline may do the trick, but, in most it won’t. Passengers just don’t have the information to back up their claim or indeed the will power to pursue it– the key to success is flight data and determination.
Flight delay compensation companies are not all bad!
Consumer groups repeatedly advise passengers not to claim using flight compensation companies. And they are right to point out the costs. BUT, what they are not alerting passengers to are the benefits. A reputable flight delay compensation company will not only have the flight data to prove a delay compensation case, they will also be backed by a team of in-house lawyers who can take the case to court if necessary.
Yes, we charge a fee! The team at Moneysavingexpert.com don’t work for free either!
We hear the constant cry, ‘flight delay compensation companies charge a fee’, of course we do. Every business charges for its services, even Martin Lewis and his team at Moneysavingexpert.com don’t work for free. Here at EUclaim we work on a no win no fee basis, but, if we take on the case and are successful we charge €25 admin fee and 27% of the final settlement.
What do we provide? Peace of mind, information and action.
Just what do our customers get? Peace of mind, information and action. We can prove whether their case is viable to the airline, and if necessary, the courts, we handle all the tough stuff and we stay the course until we get a result for our clients. Many think it is a quick fix, a bit like a shop refund but they are wrong. It’s not immediate, it’s a legal process and it can take time. It can be a year plus before we achieve a result and that’s not us being tardy that’s because the airlines like to play hard ball and delay payments. That is the level of service that our customers pay for.
Van der Lans Vs KLM
Take the Van der Lans Vs KLM as an example, it has been in the court system for 2 years and airlines have tactically used the case as a reason to slow the flight delay compensation process to a standstill. Recently, however, the ECJ ruled that a technical fault which occurred unexpectedly, which is not attributable to poor maintenance and which was also not detected during routine maintenance checks, does not fall within the definition of ‘extraordinary circumstance’. Our team of analysts took a look at the potential costs and estimate that airlines are looking at a backlog of payments in the region of €400 million per year!
Flight data, flight data, flight data
And then, most importantly, there’s our flight data. Have we mentioned that before? To win a case for flight delay compensation you need evidence to prove that the flight delay was not an extraordinary circumstance but the fault of the airline and that leads us straight back to flight data. We like to think our data is second to none and we have 188,000 flight delay compensation successes against airlines, to date, which we feel proves our point.
So, it all comes down to the data. Yes, we have mentioned it again, but it is very important. Customers can contact an airline direct, using template letters provided by the CAA or other consumer action groups such as Which? or moneysavingexpert.com but we’ll be frank, our customers tell us that sometimes it works, but in most cases it doesn’t.
Phote credits: flickr.com
