The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) – the UK’s aviation industry regulator – has outlined basic legal rights for passengers affected by this week’s significant flight disruptions.
Thousands of passengers have been stranded and disrupted by flight cancellations and delays caused by an air traffic control technical outage suffered by the UK’s National Air Traffic Services (NATS).
NATS, on Monday, applied heavy air traffic restrictions from UK airports to maintain safety during the outage.
While the glitch has been fixed, there remains a hefty backlog of flight disruption – including at Dublin Airport, with delays and cancellations now into a second day.
The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) – the UK’s aviation industry regulator – has outlined basic legal rights for passengers affected by this week’s significant flight disruptions.
Airlines flying to/from the UK to/from the EU (or flying to the EU on a UK airline) are obliged to support customers.
After “significant” delays (waiting for more than 2 hours after scheduled take-off for a short-haul flight, more than 3 hours for medium haul and 4 hours for long-haul flights) airlines must provide food and drink vouchers and refund the cost of phone calls.
Airlines must also provide accommodation for passengers if they are forced to wait overnight for their flight (including transport to the hotel).
Airlines must also pay passengers compensation if their flights are more than 3 hours late. This, however, only comes into play if it is the airline’s fault for the lateness and is unlikely to come into play in this case where air traffic control problems cause the delay.
Airlines must inform passengers when they are likely to be flying, although passengers are also heavily advised by the CAA to do their own work, in this regard, by keeping in contact with airlines and airport staff.
Airlines must also refund passengers if they don’t want to travel after having been delayed for more than 5 hours.
