Earlier this week, the Court of Justice delivered a judgment in case C-832/18 Finnair. The case proceeded without written opinion from the AG and concerned the interpertation of Regulation (EC) No 261/2004 on passenger rights in the event of denied boarding and of cancellation or long delay of flights. The judgment adds another major element to the pro-consumer case law of the Court of Justice.
Facts of the case
The dispute revolved around a Finnair flight from Helsinki (Finland) to Singapore, which encourtered multiple problems. Not only was the original flight cancelled due to a technical defect, but also the alternative connection, scheduled for the next day, was delayed by almost 19 hours. The applicants brought an action in a Finnish court seeking to have the airline ordered to pay them the sum of EUR 1200 each: covering EUR 600 on account of the cancellation of the original Helsinki-Singapore flight plus additional EUR 600 on account of the delay of the subsequent Helsinki-Chongqing-Singapore re-routing flight. While Finnair agreed to award compensation of EUR 600 in respect of the cancellation of original flight, it refused to grant the second compensation claim. According to Finnair, Regulation No 261/2004 did not impose an
obligation of this kind and, even if it did, the delay of re-routing flight had been caused by extraordinary circumstances (defect of an ‘on condition’ part). Interestingly, unlike the Finnish court of first instance, the Court of Justice did not find the arguments of Finnair convicing and opted for a pro-consumer reading of applicable EU law.
Judgment of the Court
Double compensation
The Court began its analysis by recalling that, pursuant to Article 5(1)(a) of Regulation No 261/2004, read in conjunction with Article 8(1), in the event of cancellation of a flight, the passengers concerned should be offered the choice between three different forms of assistance, namely either reimbursement of the ticket and, where appropriate, a return flight to the first point of departure, or re-routing to their final destination at the earliest opportunity, or such re-routing at a later date at their convenience, subject to availability of seats. Passengers in the case at hand opted for the latter form of assistance, in the course of which, however, the encountered further difficulties.
Focusing on the scope of Regulation
No 261/2004, the Court found that nothing in its Article 3 suggests that the regulation should not apply to air passengers who have been transferred by the air carrier, following the cancellation of a booked flight, on a re-routing flight to their final destination. On the contrary, Article 3(2)(b) explicitly referrs to passengers who have
been transferred by an air carrier from the flight for
which they held a reservation to another flight, irrespective of the
reason.
Furthermore, as noted by the Court in para. 27, Regulation No 261/2004 does not contain any provision intended to limit the rights of passengers who find themselves in a situation of re-routing. Broad reading of the scope of passenger rights was further supported by the purpose of that regulation, which is to address the serious trouble
and inconvenience caused by denied boarding, cancellation or long delay
of flights (in the case at hand experienced twice), as well as the effectiveness of an obligation to
provide assistance in the form of re-routing under Article 8(1). Consequently, a possibility of claiming double compensation in analysed conditions has been accepted.
Extraordinary circumstances
Also in the second part of the judgment the Court did not clearly side the airline, even if its findings remain at a high level of generality. The Court appears to suggest that key elements of the notion of ‘extraordinary circumstances’ have already been explained in its prior case law and it is now the task of national courts to apply them to cases before them. The Court thus began by recalling that according to Article 5(3) of Regulation
No 261/2004, read in the light of recitals 14 and 15, by way of
derogation from Article 5(1), an air carrier is to be
released from its obligation to pay passengers compensation under
Article 7, if the carrier can prove that the
cancellation or delay of three hours or more is caused by ‘extraordinary
circumstances’ which could not have been avoided even if all reasonable
measures had been taken or, where such circumstances do arise, that it
adopted measures appropriate to the situation, deploying all its
resources in terms of staff or equipment and the financial means at its
disposal, in order to prevent that situation from resulting in the
cancellation or long delay. In doing so, the Court referred to its previous case law, on which we reported in our earlier posts (see eg Runaway closure..., Loose screws...). The Court further recalled that events may be classified as ‘extraordinary circumstances’ if, by their nature or origin, they are not
inherent in the normal exercise of the activity of the air carrier
concerned and are outside that carrier’s actual control, both conditions
being cumulative (para. 38). The notion, therefore, does not include technical shortcomings inherent in aircraft maintenance, considering that breakdowns of this kind, even premature, are, in principle, intrinsically linked to the operating system of the aircraft.
In the case at hand Finnair contended that technical defect it was faced with should nonetheless be qualified as an extrordinary circumstance, considering that the affected rudder
steering servo was a so-called ‘on condition’ part, which is only replaced by a
new part when it becomes defective. The airline appears to have stocked up on the spare part, but a delay - related to repair itself - was nonetheless unavoidable. The Court did not expressly endorse such an interpretation, however. Rather, according to the Court, the failure of an ‘on
condition’ part, which
the air carrier has prepared to replace by permanently stocking a spare
part, constitutes an event which, by its nature
or origin, is inherent in the normal exercise of the activity of the air
carrier concerned and is not outside its actual control, unless such a
failure is not intrinsically linked to the operating system of the
aircraft, which it is for the referring court to determine.
