Air Europa will have to pay 1,200 euros to a family for a delay of more than three and a half hours on a flight from Lanzarote to Madrid. This has been determined by the Commercial Court number 6 of Madrid, which has admitted the lawsuit filed by this family and has condemned the airline to pay this compensation.
The events occurred on December 19, when a couple and their son were scheduled to depart from Guacimeta at 4:55 p.m. and arrive in Barajas at 8:25 p.m. However, they did not do so until midnight. Now, the company is obliged to compensate each of them with 400 euros. That is the amount claimed by the plaintiffs, alluding to articles 5, 6 and 7 of Regulation 261/2004 of the European Parliament, the regulations governing compensation and assistance to air travelers when cancellations, major delays or denied boarding occur. They also emphasized that the airline did not inform of the causes of the delay, "the defendant not offering the assistance and information legally required, nor food or beverages."
According to the ruling, in its defense Air Europa "limited itself to denying the delay attributed to it, without providing any evidence to disprove the imputed delay." In this regard, the company tried to discredit the 'screenshots' of the specialized website Fligtsats that the family provided to demonstrate that delay. The ruling, however, considers that "the defendant's attitude of challenging that information obtained from a company specialized in flight statistics and computer management, without providing evidence to the contrary that it easily has, as it constitutes its own business and traffic, in no way allows to disprove the data contained in the screenshot."
Obliged to provide a certificate with the actual time of departure and arrival
In addition, the ruling emphasizes that the airline is "obliged under legal and contractual regulations to provide a certificate of actual time of departure and arrival to passengers who use their transport services." Air Europa argued that since that request "had not been formally made", it was not obliged to provide that data.
However, the ruling considers that this "claim and argumentation must be rejected", "especially when the obligation to certify the actual departure and arrival times to its customers allows it to certify in its favor in a judicial process, which it has not done." "And such deficiency should harm it," he adds.
On the other hand, the ruling also cites jurisprudence of the European Union to make it clear that in the case of major delays such as the one suffered by this family (the Regulation considers a major delay when it is more than three hours), "for compensation purposes", these delays must be "equated" with cancellation.