If you have a dispute with an airline, it's very important to know your rights – and to be persistent.

We've written before here about the EC regulation 261/2004 which sets out minimum rights for passengers flying to/from or within Europe in the event of delay or cancellation. But it's clear that not all airlines are playing ball. My personal experience bears this out, and shows how much determination you sometimes need in order to get satisfaction.

My case involved Virgin Atlantic and a cancelled flight from the US to the UK. The cancellation was at the last-minute (we had already boarded) and was due to a technical fault with the aircraft. The end-result was a transfer to a later flight and a six-hour late arrival in London.

According to the regulations, such a delay, when not due to "extraordinary circumstances", means that passengers are entitled to compensation.

The compensation levels are on a scale determined by the advance notice, the distance, and the length of the delay, and 600€is at the top end of the scale.

The first response of Virgin Atlantic was to say that technical faults count as extraordinary circumstances (like bad weather and security risks) and therefore compensation was not payable.

This seemed odd, so I dug deeper. A case was taken to the European Court of Justice on just this matter in 2007 which resulted in the explicit ruling that "a technical problem in an aircraft which leads to the cancellation of a flight is not covered by the concept of 'extraordinary circumstances'".

There are some exceptions to this, but the principle has been established that everyday technical faults do not constitute extraordinary circumstances.

In my case, I wrote to Virgin Atlantic to point out why I believed they were wrong, and quoted the Court of Justice ruling (Wallentin-Herman versus Alitalia). The airline's response? A further letter ignoring the court ruling and saying, "... there seems to be little else I can add to what we have already said."

I decided to take this further, and submitted the case to my local County Court in the UK (otherwise known as a "small claims court") – a claim against the defendant, Virgin Atlantic, to which they were legally obliged to respond within 28 days. This time, better news. "We see little value in disputes of this nature with our passenger and as such, we would like to settle it for you." An offer of full payment was made on condition that the legal claim was withdrawn.

This short summary of one individual case raises a number of issues:

• The EC regulation actually says that airlines are obliged to inform passengers of their rights when such an incident happens. In this case not only was this not done, but the right to claim was denied twice in writing.
• It takes real persistence to get a positive result in such cases. Even the threat of legal action didn't work in this instance; only an actual legal case.
• We do not advocate resorting to legal action as a matter of course (and indeed, outside the EU, such protections do not apply, in the same way). In this case, it was a matter of last resort. We feel it is always best to try to reach a solution through other means, something we are happy to advise our members on.

Two things seem clear to me.

Right now, the rules are not being adhered to by all airlines – some will simply stall and bluff to avoid paying up.

But, on the other hand, this regulation could be extremely costly for airlines. A 747 with say 300 passengers on board would have cost the airline 180,000€ to compensate in this situation if all passengers were treated properly.With the stakes so high, is it any wonder that some airlines do not play ball?

I suspect that these two things are related.

Featured in IAPA First Class July 2010.
Author: Jonathan French, Head of Brand IAPA