TMCs are giving airlines an easy ride on delays and cancellations according to new compensation service EUclaim.
”TMCs are refusing to challenge because they all have deals with airlines,” says EUclaim founder Hendrik Noorderhaven.
The Netherlands-based claims service, which has launched in the UK, said individual passengers and TMCs were equally reluctant to pursue claims when things went wrong.
”Business people who don”t pay for their own ticket also don”t ask for their money back,” says Noorderhaven, principally because they don”t pay for their own tickets.
Noorderhaven, an ex-software company chief and former regular business traveller says he set up EUclaim after being repeatedly fobbed off by carriers. EUclaim has systems that enable it to track flight departures worldwide and check slot times, weather conditions and individual aircraft registrations, allowing EUclaim to trace the movement of an individual aircraft.
Noorderhaven said information like this permitted EUclaim to challenge the traditional defence used by airlines that delays were the result of ”extraordinary circumstances” ” the get-out clause that allows carriers to avoid paying compensation under EU law.
It recently used data to show that a cancellation caused by a supposedly damaged aircraft was actually due to a lack of seats sold.
EUclaim works on a no-win, no-fee basis, but takes 27% of any compensation awarded. It has so far fought 4,500 claims, mainly for long-haul leisure travellers and been awarded an average ”865 per claim. All have been settled out of court.
EUclaim plans to have predictive software by the end of the year that will indicate problems before they happen.
”If BA is two 777s short, we will know that flights will be cancelled.” Noorderhaven said. He added that he could predict which routes would suffer knock-on effects.
”Sixty-five per cent of all cancellations happen on less than 20 routes, there is a pecking order of flights that will be cancelled.”
The new service only covers flights within the EU or EU carriers flying to the UK and so would not be effective when flying to the EU with a foreign carrier from outside the UK. Not surprisingly, given the fact that EUclaim is based on the Netherlands, most of the testimonials on EU Claim”s website relate to flights with KLM or its subsidiaries involving flights to/from Amsterdam. A question mark remains whether it will work in more complex markets such as the UK, France or Germany with its diversity of airlines.
More generally, while the idea is a good one, it remains to be seen whether airlines will meekly pay out compensation based on statistics provided by a third party firm. Airlines can be creative when it comes to not paying compensation and will use every ruse they can.
http://www.euclaim.co.uk/
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