If your week involved navigating flight cancellations and hellish airport queues, you have my sympathy. However, I fear out-of-pocket travellers caught in the UK air traffic control snafu will face even more frustrating delays as they fight for reimbursement.
Customer service in the aviation industry had nosedived long before a typo on a flight plan apparently sent the Nats computer system into a bank holiday meltdown this week, causing hundreds of flights to be cancelled during peak holiday season.
As we await the investigation into how on earth this could have happened, one thing is clear — the initial incident was beyond the airlines’ control. They don’t have to pay compensation, but this does not absolve them of their duty of care to thousands of stranded passengers who battled to obtain adequate information or assistance.
Legally, airlines must ensure passengers are quickly rerouted (with a rival carrier if necessary) or refunded when flights are cancelled. Depending on the length of the delay, meals and overnight accommodation should be provided. Delayed passengers will qualify for support if they are flying from a UK airport, returning to the country on a British or European airline, or arriving in the EU on a UK carrier.
But one only has to glance at news reports and social media feeds this week to see the reality.
Given the timing and scale of the disruption, airlines claim they’re doing all they can. Yet following a summer of airport misery thanks to strikes and wildfires, campaigners argue it is too easy for carriers to shrug off their legal responsibilities to disrupted passengers knowing they will never face serious consequences.
This week’s events have been especially costly for passengers who were told they must wait several days for an alternative flight home.
If airlines have not provided a hotel, the choice for passengers has been stark. Put it on the credit card and hope you’ll eventually be reimbursed. Otherwise, lie down on the airport floor and try to sleep.
Aviation regulator the Civil Aviation Authority says that if airlines do not provide accommodation or alternative flights, passengers can organise their own. But that’s assuming they’ve got money to risk.
“If you end up paying for things yourself or booking your own replacement flight or hotel, keep every receipt and make sure your claim is not excessive,” its website advises.
Yet the spike in demand caused by the disruption means the prices of hotel rooms and alternative flights have been anything but reasonable (and the airlines will have benefited from those higher ticket prices).
With their holiday over, many thousands of people submitting reimbursement claims to airlines now face a nervous wait.
“The airlines have an opportunity here to get their act together and show that the reimbursement mechanism actually works for customers,” says James Daly, managing director at Fairer Finance, a research and rating agency.
If you think your travel insurer might pick up the tab, Daly notes they often refuse to pay out in situations like this where statutory protections from travel providers are supposed to kick in.
“That’s why it’s so crucial that this part of the system needs to work,” he adds. “We’re talking serious amounts of money for stranded passengers.”
However, airlines can make it extremely difficult for passengers to obtain the compensation to which they are legally entitled. Take the debacle over pandemic travel vouchers, for instance.
I received a £50 future travel voucher from an airline last year, but when I tried to use it to book a flight, I found out it couldn’t be redeemed online. The extra charges for telephone bookings meant it was not worth bothering with.
As a customer, it can feel like airlines make it as difficult as possible for us to get what we’re entitled to, reasoning that eventually, we’ll give up. Yet it’s all too easy for them to charge us if we spell a name wrong, fail to print a boarding pass or, god forbid, want to sit next to our children.
If you have time to kill in the airport, here’s a poser. In the past 20 years, how many fines has the UK aviation regulator levied on airlines who break the rules?
If you guessed “zero” you are correct, but it’s a bit of a trick question because the CAA has never had the power to fine airlines directly. However, a major campaign organised by Which?, the consumer group, argues the government should grant these powers in the King’s Speech this autumn.
“Airlines simply aren’t afraid of the regulator,” says Lisa Webb, consumer law expert at Which?, who would like to see direct powers to monitor and fine airlines when they flout the rules.
The CAA can threaten airlines with court action, but this process can take years. It upped the ante in July, announcing enforcement action against Wizz Air following high volumes of complaints about the airline not reimbursing passengers for issues including providing alternative flights following cancellations (Wizz says it is working with the CAA to resolve this).
Nevertheless, the CAA says this has contributed to a large number of county court judgments which have been found against Wizz Air over the past nine months as determined passengers resort to the small claims court to get their money back.
It’s not just disgruntled Wizz passengers who are forced to take this step. However, even those who win cases against airlines face further delays. According to Which?, more than £4.5mn in outstanding judgments was owed at the beginning of March — proof the system isn’t working for consumers.
I fully support its call for a mandatory dispute resolution system for all airlines travelling to and from the UK. “The law is super clear about what should happen in these circumstances, but that’s not of much use to consumers if they can’t get it enforced,” Webb adds.
Nevertheless, these proposals are likely to go down like the contents of a cold sick bag with under-fire airline bosses. They claim this week’s incident will cost £100mn and are complaining that Nats will not have to pay a penny of compensation to them.
To this I say: welcome to the club! Passengers are not at fault for these delays either, yet unless the regulator goes full throttle on enforcing our rights, I fear we will be the ones left on the hook financially.
Claer Barrett is the FT’s consumer editor and the author of ‘What They Don’t Teach You About Money’. claer.barrett@ft.com Instagram @Claerb
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