When the coronavirus paralyzed the world, in March 2020, the airports also emptied. The declaration of the state of alarm and the mobility restrictions forced airlines to cancel flights. Commuting for work and leisure trips disappeared. Many plans that remained to be done and that led some affected to court, claiming the payment of the price of the tickets acquired or even asking for compensation.
In A Coruña, the reinforcement judge of the Commercial Courts, which is the one in charge of resolving this type of procedure, issued, between May 2021 and January 2022, thirteen sentences on COVID-19 as a reason of cancellation of flights, and in all of them it decreed that the airlines must return the money of the tickets -the bonuses are not foreseen in the community regulation-, but it understands that it is not appropriate to compensate the affected passengers because the suspensions were due to a ” extraordinary circumstance & rdquor ;, that is, the pandemic.
Given the advance of the virus, the European Commission decided to temporarily restrict non-essential travel to the European Union & rdquor ;, according to the judge in one of the dismissal sentences. It dealt with the case of a woman who demanded from Iberia the payment of 363.56 euros that she paid for some tickets from A Coruña to Vienna with a stopover in Madrid. A trip that was going to take place between March 13 and 19, 2020, but was canceled due to COVID. The company offered her travel vouchers, but the passenger rejected this method, she claimed the money and also legal interest and costs.
The judge ordered the airline to pay the amount of those tickets, since the bonus – a technique used by all airlines in the face of the avalanche of cancellations – is not provided for in the community regulations. The company, which in this case is not obliged to compensate the affected passenger, does have to offer you alternative transportation or proceed with reimbursement and assistance.
European transport regulations establish common rules on compensation and assistance to air passengers in the event of denied boarding —due to overbooking— and cancellation or delay of flights. Compensation, depending on the reason and the kilometers traveled, range between 250 and 600 euros. Why in these cases, then, is there no right to compensation? The ruling of the A Coruña court states that “an air carrier in charge of carrying out a flight is not obliged to pay compensation if it can prove that the cancellation is due to extraordinary circumstances that could not have been avoided even if all reasonable measures had been taken & rdquor ;. The plaintiff reports that the suspension of her flights was due to the coronavirus, which is why, according to the judge, it is “force majeure” because there was “a massive worldwide cancellation of flights due to the health alert.”
In the community regulation, in fact, the “cases of political instability, weather conditions incompatible with the performance of the flight, security risks, unexpected deficiencies in flight safety and strikes that affect operations” are set as examples of extraordinary circumstances. of an air carrier in charge of carrying out a flight & rdquor ;. To that list is now added a global pandemic.
To decide the rejection of compensation, the judge also recovers a ruling from Bilbao Commercial Court number 2 of November 2020, which states that an extraordinary circumstance It occurs “when public authorities directly prohibit certain flights or prevent the movement of people, excluding, de facto, the flight in question & rdquor ;, as happened in the confinement of almost two years ago.
However, there are cases in other courts in Galicia in which the airlines were forced to cover the expenses that the traveler had to assume due to the mishap. There is no compensation for damages, but there are credits for the payment of other tickets —flights that were also missed—, lodging or food. The term to claim for a canceled flight is five years from the date of the flight when European Regulation 261/2004 is applied. This rule refers to flights operated by European airlines —regardless of origin and destination— or those that originate at an airport in the European Union.
Last month, Alvedro received another piece of bad news. Vueling announced the definitive closure of its operational base at the airport on April 1, which will cause the disappearance of 30 jobs – the airline offers transfers to Barcelona – and early flights to El Prat, since the plane does not make night at the Coruña airport.
Alvedro faces new routes and the closure of the Vueling base
Alvedro was one of the most affected national airports in 2021, due to the reduction of frequencies and destinations due to the pandemic. With 595,286 passengers, it became the fourth Spanish aerodrome that recovered the fewest passengers last year. Far is his goal, to exceed one million travelers as he did between 2015 and 2019. The numbers were better than those of 2020, the year of COVID, when it did not even reach 450,000 users. Now 2022 begins with the aim of continuing to grow, although the beginning of the year was once again full of uncertainty due to the appearance of the omicron variant. In fact, Vueling withdrew Alvedro’s links to Tenerife North, Gran Canaria and Mallorca from sale on its website. The airline claimed that it would follow the evolution of COVID to reactivate them. The airport will add international links. Starting in April, Vueling will connect Alvedro with London (Gatwick) and Paris (Orly). The flights are already on sale. The opposition has criticized that they are not with Heathrow and Charles de Gaulle, which offer more links with third destinations from the British and French capital, respectively. The Tourism Consortium launched a public tender for airlines to operate destinations from Alvedro, to which Vueling applied alone to operate these two routes. In addition, Tourism awarded Binter the connection with Gran Canaria as of April, a link that had already started operating at the end of last year without municipal support. Volotea was the only airline that presented itself to operate the connections to Malaga and Valencia, whose tickets it already sells.