There has been a growing rise, in cases of passenger mistreatment by flight. There have been cases of flight delays, cancellation, airlines behaving rudely, flight over booking or luggage missing cases. Montreal Convention covers all these cases. This act provides safety and security to passengers in more than 120 countries. Air passengers can claim compensation if there is a flight delay of more than 3 hours or cancellation.
In the event that your flight's delayed for at least 2 hours, your airline must give you:
- Meals and drink
- access to telephone calls and messages
- accommodation if, delay is overnight and meals and transportation “to” and “fro” hotel
The airline should give you vouchers for things like meals, water and phone calls at the airport. In case, that they don't offer you help at the airport, keep receipts for costs and attempt to claim from the airline later. Airlines pay for nominal costs – you won't get cash back for drinks, costly dinners or lavish lodgings.
You're additionally qualified to get compensation if the delay is the airline's mistake – for instance, in the event there was a technical problem. You won't get compensation if there was a delay due to, something like bad weather or war at destination place or airport traffic.
You're eligible for compensation depending upon:
- Flight Distance
- the length of the delay
In case, flight delay is for more than 5 hours
It is not mandatory to take the flight if it's delayed by this amount of time. It doesn't matter whose mistake is it
In case you don't want to take the flight here is what you can get
- Full flight Refund
- Another booking in a flight
- Compensation for time lost
You can contact airline help desk for this and in case, they don't listen you can always contact the authorities.
Flight Cancellation
In case, of flight cancellation you can either claim full refund along with compensation for things like parking, cab, meals and time as well or a booking in another flight. If you opt for second option and there is time left for the flight, then airline will offer accommodation.
How to Claim Compensation?
- The first step, you might want to take is get in touch with the airlines counter and know the situation exactly. Try to seek their point of view.
- In case you are not getting any concrete reply and have waited for hours, ask them to give you meals and water. In case, they fail to offer you the coupon, then you can buy it yourself and make the claim later.
- It is mandatory for airlines to give you a letter about how to file a claim for delay or cancellation. In case they don't, this will go against them.
- The procedure is simple. File, a written complaint with the airlines be it for delay or cancellation. In case they don't listen you can get in touch with airport authorities.
- You have 7 days to do this and we can file complaint either from place of boarding, destination or from home site as well.
- Along with this give all proofs like flight tickets, cab charges, parking charges, meals, financial loss due to time delayed
- In case, airlines agree to pay then, it will be good. But most of the times, airlines will reject your claim citing “extraordinary circumstances”
- You can approach court for getting compensation or hire a person who will help you in making sure you get your rights.
Make sure, you do get compensation for time lost. Airlines pay only 1% of their total revenue as compensation. However, airlines liability for compensation can lie up to 14-15% of revenue. This is because, either passengers are not aware of their rights or they don't want to get into hassles.
There were more than 40,000 flight cancellations across the globe in the month of July and flight delays more than 7,30,000. I know this is surprising, but this a fact. There was time delay of more than 30% of flights. All of these cannot be just “extraordinary circumstances”. This is showing a growing laxity in operations on airlines part. We need to make sure we are aware of our rights and ready for all kinds of situation.
Nguyen An Tra My
Martin Wynn
