A passenger who suffered a delay of more than three hours on her flight to Mallorca has won her case against Ryanair. The ruling, handed down by a court in Zaragoza, orders the company to pay compensation of 250 euros for the delay caused and all the costs of the legal proceedings. The case, brought by the platform Reclamador.es, refers to a flight last summer, on 11 July 2024, scheduled to depart at 5.20 p.m., which ended up leaving for the island at 9.40 p.m.
The complainant landed in Mallorca after 10:55 p.m., resulting in a total delay of four and a half hours. Ryanair defended the flight delay as a case of ‘force majeure’, claiming that bad weather at other airports affected subsequent flights. The judge argued that the company did not do everything possible to ensure that the flight departed on time and stated in the ruling that ‘the strategy of some low-cost airlines to save costs, such as not having enough aircraft and blaming delays on extraordinary circumstances, must be punished,’ as reported by the platform in a press release.
Reclamador.is taking advantage of this victory to remind users that it is often ‘common practice for airlines to tell those affected that they are not entitled to compensation because the incident was caused by force majeure that was unforeseeable by the airline, but in many cases, the purpose of this argument is to avoid compensating passengers financially because in reality no such extraordinary circumstances have occurred,’ they state.
Ryanair argued in court that the passenger was not entitled to any compensation because the real reason for the delay was that there were no aircraft available due to force majeure. However, the legal team insisted that this circumstance was ‘entirely avoidable’ if all reasonable measures had been taken.
This defence was supported by the judge, who stated in the ruling that "while it is true that a company cannot be obliged to have an aircraft at every airport with departures in order to react to such circumstances, the fact that an aircraft is assigned to several flights in a short period of time is solely a business decision, aimed at reducing costs, etc. but which leads to a clear risk that an incident on one of them will affect all the other flights assigned to the aircraft. This was the case here, where the company's lack of foresight in the London-Zaragoza rotation, when it was already aware of the serious delay caused in the London-Porto rotation, led to this delay by failing to take the necessary measures to prevent it."
The amount of €250 refers to the financial compensation that a passenger can claim for a flight delayed by more than 3 hours, if the flight distance is 1,500 km or less, in this case between Zaragoza and Palma it is 396 km. This amount is regulated by European Union Regulation (EC) No. 261/2004.
Finally, the platform recalls that "the CJEU in cases of extraordinary circumstances follows a line of case law that increasingly protects passengers, to the point that there is a recent ruling of 16 May 2024 where the European Court indicates that airlines must compensate passengers in cases of extraordinary circumstances if they do not demonstrate that they took all reasonable measures within their power to avoid them, something that has happened in this case and which is common, especially among low-cost airlines that try to reduce costs by all means to increase profits," they conclude.
In the meantime, Ryanair has welcomed the decision of the Krakow district court to convict a passenger who disrupted flight FR4204 from Glasgow to Kraków on 30 June 2024. This passenger’s inexcusable behaviour forced this flight to divert to Rzeszów, where the aircraft landed, and the passenger was offloaded causing 191 passengers and 6 crew to face unnecessary disruption. The passenger received a €3,230 fine.
Ryanair is committed to ensuring that all passengers and crew travel in a safe and respectful environment, without unnecessary disruption caused by a tiny number of unruly passengers. Ryanair has a strict zero tolerance policy towards passenger misconduct and will continue to take decisive action to combat unruly passenger behaviour on aircraft for the benefit of the vast majority of passengers who do not disrupt flights.
A Ryanair spokesperson said: “It is unacceptable that passengers are suffering unnecessary disruption as a result of one unruly passenger’s behaviour. Yet this was regrettably the case for passengers on this flight from Glasgow to Kraków in June 2024, which was forced to divert to Rzeszów as a result of an individual passenger’s disruptive behaviour.
"Today we welcome the decision of the Kraków district court which demonstrates just one of the many consequences that passengers who disrupt flights will face as part of Ryanair’s zero tolerance policy, and we hope this action will deter further disruptive behaviour on flights so that passengers and crew can travel in a comfortable and respectful environment.”