Denied boarding apparently covered up as a delayed flight

score:29

Accepted answer

TLDR: You were lucky to get your 300 Euros.

Here's what probably happened. 'Olorin' discovered a problem and thought they might have to delay your flight. They sent out a notice warning all passengers about this, as per good customer relations practice. (People hate being told about problems at the last minute).

You respond to this by calling the airline, who suggest you wait and sort it out later, but you decide you want to get yourself booked on a different flight. Which they do.

Meanwhile the airline has also been working hard to see if they can fix the problem, and sometime during the day they do. The flight goes back to its normal time, and they notify all passengers about it.

Unfortunately for you, you are no longer booked on that flight, so you don't get told. Instead you fly out on the flight that you specifically asked to be put on (against the advice of the airline).

To answer your question:

  • There is no indication that you were 'denied boarding'. Unless you were the only person told that the flight was going to be late, which I'm pretty certain wasn't the case.
  • You were lucky to get your 300 EUR, which the airline probably gave you because you were clearly annoyed and they prefer happy customers, not because you deserved it. You have no chance of getting 600EUR.
  • In the future, don't switch flights immediately, and if you do, maybe call the airline a few times to check the status of the delayed flight.

Upvote:3

Why does it matter that your first flight actually flew on time? It is entirely irrelevant to your compensation claim. The relevant sequence of events is:

  1. You were booked for departure at 5 PM.
  2. You were told that the departure was delayed by over seven hours, meaning that you would miss your connection.
  3. You asked for and were booked on an alternative itinerary arriving five hours late.

As far as you were concerned, your flight was delayed. You were certainly not denied boarding. Your right to compensation should be the same as it would be if the original flight had in fact departed at 12:15 AM.

Upvote:9

So, a 7:15 delay is specific enough that my presumption would be a crew time issue initially. Somehow, they manged to rectify this and staff the original flight.

However, since you voluntarily rescheduled the flight, you were no longer delayed, presuming the A-D-C itinerary operated on time.

Pro Tip: Un-delaying a flight is quite rare, but it happens. I never push for re-accommodation unless there's a guaranteed new arrival time.

The 300 EUR was probably just hush money to not even file a complaint, despite the likely hood of it not being successful.

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