EC261/2004 - Delay/Cancellation

[scooby5]

So, my flight last week was cancelled 20min after supposed to board, with us still in the lounge. This meant an overnight stay in a hotel, supplied by the airline, and a rerouting the following day.

Airline has confirmed they will pay my telephone bill from hotel to them for rearranging my flights - there was no personnel at this outpost. This amounted to over Euro30 as they were pretty useless in the first call.

In this case, they are claiming "Bird Strike" as a way of getting out of their Euro600 compensation. Without seeing technical logs for the flight, is there a way to confirm the cause?

A couple of years ago we had a case with BA but their claim was Severe Thunderstorms over Europe that impacts all flights out of Heathrow so that claim was refused.

[MAN Flyer]

You don't say what airline or route this was so difficult to say for certain but if all the criteria about it are met you should be entitled to an EU261 claim. They will always try and get out of it and usually refuse first claims as they know enough people drop it at that stage to make it worth doing.

[scooby5]

Well it was my LOT sectors, NUE-WAW-SIN with NUE-WAW cancelled 20min after we were supposed to be pushed back.

LO, of course, refused the first claim since Bird Strike is now allowed as Exceptional Circumstance where no compensation is given. It is, however, impossible as a layperson to confirm or not without see what was actually filed to authorities. This "Exceptional Circumstance" still is a grey area as is finding the truth or otherwise.