Insufficient personnel for handling luggage may cause flight delays.
If an airline is short on workers to load baggage, that could be a special case justifying a flight delay. The European Court of Justice (ECJ) in Luxembourg made that decision on a Thursday in a situation from Germany. The airline would not need to compensate passengers affected in this unique case, though the German court has to decide whether such a situation existed in this particular scenario (Case C-405/23).
In 2021, a flight operated by the Maltese airline TAS from Cologne-Bonn to the Greek island of Kos was held up for close to four hours. The primary cause was the absence of airport staff available to place the travelers' luggage onto the aircraft.
Passengers are eligible for compensation if their flight experiences a delay of more than three hours, as stated by the European Passenger Rights Regulation. However, if the airline can demonstrate that the delay was the result of uncontrollable unusual conditions, they are exempt from paying out.
Passengers impacted by the delayed Kos-bound flight transferred their potential compensation cases to Flightright, a legal service provider. Flightright then instituted litigation against the Cologne Regional Court. The court froze the proceeding and asked the ECJ if staff shortage at baggage handling could constitute unusual conditions.
The ECJ has now confirmed this assessment. It established two necessary conditions for an extraordinary situation. Firstly, it needs to not be part of the airline's regular operations, and secondly, they should not have the capacity to control the scarcity - for example, they cannot control the airport's operator.
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The ECJ ruling in the case from Germany states that if an airline faces a deficiency in personnel for baggage loading, leading to a flight delay, they might not be required to compensate affected passengers, as long as this situation is not part of their regular operations and they cannot control the scarcity of staff. Despite the absence of enough personnel, the delayed flight from Cologne-Bonn to Kos lasted nearly four hours, prompting passengers to seek compensation through Flightright.
Source: www.ntv.de
