After the recent threat of strike action from BA cabin crew which was halted by the high court everyone who had travel plans breathed a sigh of relief, however many people are still wondering what to do if your flight is cancelled.
Under EU regulations, if your flight is cancelled within seven days of departure you are entitled to a full refund of any part of your ticket that is unused. You are also covered under The Denied Boarding Regulation if your flight is overbooked and you are unable to board, however it does depend on certain criteria such as having have a confirmed booking, whether you checked in on time (or if no check-in time was given, then at least 45 minutes before your flight was scheduled to depart.) and also if you are departing from an EU airport, or from a non-EU airport and flying into an EU airport on a ‘community carrier’ which is an airline with its headquarters and main place of business within the EU. That includes all European discount and ‘no-frills’ airlines.
If you flight is delayed, during this time you should be given two free meals and refreshments appropriate to the delay, free hotel accommodation and hotel transfers if an overnight stay is required and if the delay lasts for five hours or more, you can choose not to travel and get a refund of your ticket cost.
You are not covered under the Regulation if a cancellation or delay causes you miss your connecting flight, incur more travel costs or missed holiday days, but you may be able to claim under the Montreal Convention. When a flight is cancelled, an airline is contractually obliged to provide alternative transportation (not necessarily by air) or a refund. But most airlines’ conditions of carriage specifically exclude liability for any consequential losses. Technically, it should be possible to argue that a cancellation is the same as a delay for the purposes of making a claim under the Montreal Convention (because of the Convention simply refers to “delay in the transportation by air” and a passenger can be delayed as a result of cancellation). But in practice, the two are generally taken to be different.
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