Sue’s Guide To Fighting Flight Delay Complaints

If your holiday flight was delayed or cancelled you can write to your airline for compensation. But if the airline rejects your complaint and you want to fight on; it could cost you £25 if your complaint’s unsuccessful. This means consumers face a tough choice on how far to go when chasing a complaint.

Under EU rules you can claim compensation if your flight’s delayed for over three hours, and depending on delay time and destination, it could be up to 600 Euros; around £510. After two hours you get food and drink but no money back.

Under the old rules, if your airline rejected your claim you could ask the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), to intervene and over the last three years its successfully clawed back £17 million in compensation for passengers.

But it’s now taking a step back which means you’ll need to go to one of its approved independent dispute handlers if the airline won’t play ball.

The Retail Ombudsman has the likes of Ryanair, Flybe and Air Canada on board and won’t charge you for investigating complaints, even if they’re unsuccessful.

But the Centre for Effective Dispute Resolution (CEDR), which handles the likes of British Airways, EasyJet and Thomson charges £25 if your complaint isn’t successful.

You can still use the services of the CAA, but only if the airline you travel with doesn’t use one of the approved dispute services. There’s advice on making complaints at WWW.CAA.CO.UK