News
More than 1 million UK passengers suffered flight delays last year | FairPlane UK / 23.08.2017
More than a million passengers suffered flight delays in 2016 and a recent survey suggests that many of them could be entitled to compensation which is currently going unclaimed.
Summer is of course the time that most families take their main holiday of the year, and these days more and more of them are choosing to go abroad rather than stay in the UK.
Analysis of Civil Aviation Authority data (CAA) data has revealed that some of the UK’s biggest airlines have seen dramatic increases in delays of their flights in the last five years.
The number of EasyJet passengers that have suffered delays off more than 3 hours in the past five years is estimated to be more than 190,000, whilst 131,000 British Airways passengers and 90,000 Ryanair passengers have also suffered similar delays.
Airports with the worst flight delay records
London’s Gatwick Airport heads the list of UK airports with the worst record for flight delays. In the last five years, delays of 3 hours or more have increased by 60%. This could mean as many as 264,000 passengers suffered delays during this period.
It was another London airport that came second on the list. Despite being a larger airport than Gatwick in terms of operating flights, the amount of passengers delayed at Heathrow Airport was almost the same as Gatwick.
Compensation for flight delays
The study of the CAA data also revealed that many of the one million passengers who suffered a delay last year may have been eligible to claim flight delay compensation under existing EU (European Union) regulations. How these rules may or may not be affected by the forthcoming Brexit are still far from clear.
In which circumstances can passengers claim compensation?
To qualify to claim compensation, you must be able to answer YES to all of the following questions:
- Did your flight take off from an EU airport or did your flight land at a EU airport? If you flew into the EU, you must have been on-board an EU based airline to claim to be eligible to make a claim.
- Were you delayed for more than 3 hours from the original scheduled time of arrival?
- Was the delay the airline’s fault and not caused by what are known as “extraordinary circumstances”?
- Was the flight in the last 6 years?
