GENERAL PRINCIPLES

Three billion passengers travel by air every year. In 2004, the European Union adopted a regulation on the rights of air passengers departing from or arriving at an airport located in a Member State (Regulation No 261/2004). The Court of Justice is regularly asked to interpret that regulation in order to ensure its uniform application in all Member States. In particular, the Court has answered a recurring question: in which cases and under what conditions must an airline compensate passengers?

Although the 2004 regulation provides only that passengers whose flight has been cancelled and who have been re-routed to their destination are entitled to compensation if they lose three hours or more in relation to the duration of that flight as originally planned, the Court held in 2009 that passengers whose flight has been delayed for three hours or more are also entitled to compensation. There is, the Court ruled, no justification for treating passengers whose flight has been delayed any differently when they also reach their destination with a delay of at least three hours.

The Court indicated in that same judgment that, when a flight is cancelled or significantly delayed, airlines may be released from their obligation   to pay compensation if they prove that the cancellation or delay was due to extraordinary circumstances that were beyond their actual control and that could not have been avoided even if all reasonable measures had been taken (judgment of 19 November 2009, Sturgeon, C-402/07).