Compensation for having to spend a night at the airport?

Your Air Passenger Rights at hand

when you need them

Air Passenger Rights Book
Air Passenger Rights App
Passagiersgids

The López Sousa family was also on the Air France flight that returned to Paris (see two previous posts). Air France rebooked them on a flight 24 hours later but did not offer hotel rooms (Air Passenger Rights, p. 33). The family was left to spend the night in the terminal. 

Back home they claimed expenses of € 20.50 for each meal taken in the airport. Air France refused to pay because, it said, the family had not asked for meals at the airport... Advocate General Sharpston wiped the floor with this argument: the obligation to provide care and assistance is in no way contingent on a request by the passenger. Articles 8 and 9 clearly say that passengers shall be offered care. Also, the airline cannot deduct these costs from the € 250 compensation the passenger receives for the cancellation. See my post of 29 June 2011.

More important than the costs for the meals was that the airline had not offered the López Sousa family hotel accommodation and that it seemed to get away with it. The family had not made hotel costs - their night in the airport terminal came for free - so they had no expenses to claim. This looked like a win-win situation for the airline.

But the López Sousa family did not take this lying down and they claimed € 650 compensation for non-material damage: for having to spend a very uncomfortable night in the terminal. Whether they will be successful with their claim is for the national law to decide because the European Regulation does not deal with it. So in the end, one EU citizen may get compensation for non-material damage, and the other not.

From an EU perspective this is of course hard to accept. The European Commission plans to propose changes to the Regulation and when doing so it should consider giving passengers a right to € 200 compensation for each night that the airline fails to provide them with a hotel. This would ensure that all passengers benefit equally from the right to care in the Regulation (Air Passenger Rights, p. 19, 33 and 46).

Until then, airlines may keep considering that it is cheaper to let passengers spend the night on the floor of an airport terminal than to offer them hotel accommodation. This annoys the hell out of passengers but for some airlines this seems to be of minor concern. If at all.

Opinion Advocate General Sharpston

>> Download the App Air Passenger Rights here <<

>> Order the Book Air Passenger Rights here <<