Latest developments in European Client Regulation: Influence of pre-emptive denied boarding on passenger rights – Cyber Tech

Pre-emptive denied boarding

The CJEU clarifies that when the airline denies boarding to passengers prematurely, towards their will – right here by informing the passenger that they misplaced the appropriate to the return flight – the passenger will not be anticipated to nonetheless current themselves for boarding to keep up their passenger rights (para 38). This is a vital clarification because the literal wording of Article 2(j) of the Regulation 261/2004 qualifies ‘denied boarding’ as a refusal to hold passengers on a flight, though they’ve introduced themselves for boarding (para 23). This in turns means, pursuant to Article 3(2), passengers being current for check-in (para 24). The CJEU confirms that the idea of ‘denied boarding’ must be interpreted broadly to supply a large scope of passenger safety and covers additionally conditions of pre-emptively denied boarding, that’s boarding denied prematurely (paras 28-29). Nonetheless, passengers could declare their compensation regardless of not presenting themselves for boarding as CJEU perceives their scenario as not distinguishable from that of passengers whose reservation was transferred to a different flight by the airline, who fall inside the scope of Regulation 261/2004 pursuant to its Article 3(2)(b) (para 32). Additional argument stems from the historic goal of the Regulation 261/2004 – to stop passengers’ hardship brought on by overbooking of flights. As such, drafters didn’t anticipate pre-emptive denied boarding explicitly within the textual content of the provisions (para 34).

Proper to compensation

Additional query pertained to the applying of Article 5(1)(c)(i) of Regulation 261/2004, which excludes passengers’ proper to assert compensation for a cancelled flight, in the event that they had been knowledgeable concerning the cancellation no less than 2 weeks earlier than the scheduled departure time (para 42). As this provision introduces an exception to passenger rights, it should be interpreted strictly (para 44), and as such, it doesn’t apply to denied boarding however solely to cancelled flights (para 45).