If your travel plans have been thrown out by the recent volcano, what are your entitlements? Mark Foley of Linked Law investigates:
Entitlements under EU Regulations
There is some assistance through the European Union law. The following circumstances are covered by the EU regulation:
1. Your flight departs from an EU country
2. Your flight is from a non-EU country to an EU country and on an EU-registered airline
Delays
1. If your flight is covered by EU regulation, then you are not entitled to compensation, but you are entitled to the following assistance. The airline must provide the assistance regardless of whether the delay has been caused by something outside their control:
a. Journey less than 1500km and more than 2 hours delayed: meals, refreshments & 2 free telephone calls, emails, telexes or faxes
b. Journey between 1500km and 3500km and more than 3 hours delayed: meals, refreshments &2 free telephone calls, emails, telexes or faxes
c. Journey over 3500km and more than 4 hours delayed: meals, refreshments & 2 free telephone calls, emails, telexes or faxes
d. All flights more than 5 hours delayed (not overnight): meals, refreshments, 2 free telephone calls, emails, telexes or faxes & the right to a refund for unused parts of the ticket if you decide not travel. NB. If you decide not to travel you must claim your refund within seven days. If you are part way through a connecting flight and do not want to continue with the next leg because it no longer gets you where you want to go, you are entitled to reimbursement of the total price of the ticket and a free flight back to your point of departure.
e. All flights more than 5 hours delayed (overnight): as above and also hotel accommodation and transfers
Holiday insurance
If you have holiday insurance, this might be the time to get it out of the drawer and read the terms of it.
Some people these days may have holiday insurance as part of some other insurance without knowing it; for example as part of household policy , or sometimes these days it is an add on to some types of up market bank account offerings. The only way to tell is to get out the policy and read it. There will usually be a brief certificate with a reference to which contract terms apply, and the terms are usually set out in a booklet.
Acts of God
I suspect that most policies are going to include words which exclude compensation if the loss has been caused by an “Act of God”. What does that mean?
Certain words and phrases occurring in contracts have had their meanings explained by judges for the purposes of the deciding cases concerning the particular contracts in which they occur. It must be borne in mind that the meanings given to them are not necessarily applicable in all cases as the interpretation of each contract must depend upon the construction of its particular terms.
An “Act of God” is “such an operation of the forces of nature as reasonable foresight and ability could not foresee or reasonably provide against”. This definition comes from the 1916 case of Baldwin’s Ltd v Halifax Corporation.
A volcano and the ash drifting from is certainly therefore an Act of God.
