Home » Flights canceled due to strike, EU Court Attorney General: “No compensation for travelers”

Flights canceled due to strike, EU Court Attorney General: “No compensation for travelers”

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A strike organized by the pilots’ union is an exceptional circumstance. This means that the airline that has had to cancel so many flights for that reason does not owe any compensation to the travelers left behind. According to the Advocate General of the European Court of Justice Priit Pikamae, this is how the Sas case should be concluded.

The Court, which in any case is not bound by this opinion, will begin to deliberate on a lawsuit that could add another piece to an age-old issue: that of strikes and inefficiencies suffered by travelers. And our country, where the Alitalia affair could soon lead to a clash between the company and the unions, should look very carefully at this affair.

The Sas (Scandinavian Airlines) case concerns a gigantic strike by the pilots’ unions which took place between April 26 and May 2, 2019. An action that led the company to cancel over 4000 flights, impacting 380,000 passengers. One of these, who found himself on the ground on April 29, had asked Sas for compensation of 250 euros but was told no. According to the Scandinavian carrier, in fact, that strike constituted an exceptional circumstance which it could not have avoided in any way.

Today the Advocate General agrees with the company. According to Pikamae, a strike “is not inherent in the normal exercise of the airline’s business and is beyond its effective control” and the carrier cannot significantly affect whether it occurs or not. But perhaps the most important point is that, according to the Advocate General, SAS is not “solely responsible for the consequences deriving from collective actions by personnel”. In short, if the pilots go on strike, the company has nothing to do with it.

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Two years ago, however, the EU Court of Justice had expressed itself differently in the TuiFly case: then the staff of the German company put in place a wild strike (presenting disease certificates en masse) against the corporate restructuring plan proposed by the top management . And according to the Court, that action could not be considered an exceptional circumstance because it did not escape the control of the company, rather it was a direct consequence of it. In fact, once the agreement was reached, everything normalized.

How to make order in this chaos? Maria Pisanò, director of the European Consumer Center Italy and expert in disputes between travelers and airlines, explains it as follows: “Until a few years ago, any strike was considered an exceptional circumstance. It was therefore normal not to expect compensation in the event of a flight being canceled. The 2018 ruling introduced an important principle: there is no rule that is valid in all circumstances, it is necessary to assess on a case-by-case basis whether the company has done everything to avoid inconvenience to its customers “. This does not mean that every strike must reach the EU Court: “Those who believe they are entitled to compensation can turn to ENAC – continues Pisanò – which in turn will ask the airline for all the documentation of the case, to verify that the flight was actually canceled due to circumstances beyond the company’s will. If, for example, the carrier knew that the employees would go on strike and did nothing to resolve the dispute, that may not be exceptional as a cause at all ”.

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As we said, each case is different. The Sas pilots’ strike assumed such immense proportions that, if each customer had obtained compensation, the Scandinavian carrier would have had to pay an exorbitant sum: 117 million euros. Precisely for this reason, according to the Advocate General, the strike would risk turning into a kind of deadly blackmail in the hands of the trade unions against the company.

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