Late boarding and passport control failures caused a missed flight in Turkey on a non-EU airline – what compensation can I claim?
- By
- Aparna Patel
- |
- 24 Jul, 2023
- |
If you were to claim any damages, who would you blame?
- The airline doesn’t control the passport systems.
- The delay for departure may have to do with incoming aircraft, which may have been delayed due to weather (again, not an airline problem).
- The airline offered you a quicker alternate (your choice); which got you to your destination along with your luggage – so can’t really blame the airline here.
- Airports are generally more expensive than normal retail outlets; so nothing of news here.
Unfortunately this is a mild case of delays; I can relate my own worse airline delay story and you would think yours was a day at the park 🙂
As mentioned by others, your only recourse is your normal travel insurance (you may already have coverage if you purchased the tickets via your credit card and purchased goods/services at the airport with your credit card – check your policy).
I would chalk this up to travel experience and move on.
As airline horror stories go, this one is pretty mild. You arrived at your destination city only a few hours late, with luggage.
Moreover (and this is the important point) the reason for all this delay was completely outside the airline’s control. They don’t control the passport line, or the computer systems. They don’t owe you anything, any more than if the bus taking you to the airport had been late. In fact the airline sounds like it did a pretty good job of getting you where you wanted to be as soon as possible.
You could try to ask for the cost of getting from Stanstead to where you wanted to be, if it was more than the cost of getting there from Gatwick, but if you had said you absolutely had to go to Gatwick they would probably have done it, just later. You could try claiming something from the airport, but given you were out of pocket maybe a few currency units, I doubt it would be worth it.
Put it down to experience.
Sorry, but no. If you have travel insurance they may cover any additional costs you’ve had – check your policy.
Next time, book a longer connection.
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