When passengers are wrongly turned away by airports, how should they be compensated?

Q You have been writing again about passengers being turned away from airports because staff get the rules wrong. How is the passenger recompensed for such errors?

Carole E

A When ground staff at airports, for whatever reason, decide to deny boarding to a properly documented passenger, the emotional impact can be huge.

In the past few days I have been dealing with two cases involving holidays for important birthday celebrations. Passengers at Gatwick and Humberside airports arrived early in the morning, looking forward to trips to Copenhagen on Norwegian, and Paris on KLM, respectively, only to be turned away by staff working for their airlines.

In both cases the passengers were blamed for the problem, when it was the responsibility of the airline. Even though the carriers subcontract the task of checking in and examining passports to ground handlers, ultimately the buck stops with the airline whose passengers are wrongly denied boarding.

Once the staff decide to bar the passenger, things can get complicated. The basic premise is that the person who was incorrectly turned away is entitled to cash compensation of £220, £350 or £520, depending on the distance. They also get a refund of the ticket they were unable to use.

But there are always consequential losses. In most of the cases I handle, passengers travelling with the “victim” decide not to travel – a birthday treat weekend without the person who is celebrating has little appeal. Morally, I think all members of the party should be recompensed in the same way.

On top of this, the unfortunate passenger is likely to have some combination of prepaid accommodation, car rental and travel tickets that cannot be recouped. The two cases I investigated involve total losses of around £1,400 and £2,700, respectively.

While there is likely to be pushback from the airlines, I am advising the travellers to take action under the Consumer Rights Act – which requires traders to provide a service with “reasonable care and skill”.

It is reasonable to expect that airlines would use ground handlers who can understand the quite straightforward rules for British passport holders to Europe. I believe a legal claim for (here’s that word again) reasonable costs caused by the airline’s ineptitude.

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Q Have you noticed how easyJet is decimating their schedules? For example, there used to be two flights a week between Manchester and Sofia, right though the year. They are all but disappearing this summer. Another Brexit “dividend”?

Dominic F

A Lots to unpack here. First, easyJet is not decimating schedules. Britain's biggest budget airline is expecting growth in the current financial year of around 8 per cent in “available seat kilometres” – flights multiplied by distance. Both the number of flights and the average distance they fly are increasing.

Aircraft are highly mobile assets, and a big pan-European airline like easyJet will assign its planes to the routes where the highest return is predicted. Some long new routes are coming on stream from the start of April, including Luton to Tbilisi in Georgia and Gatwick to Sal in Cape Verde.

But the current twice-weekly Manchester-Sofia flight is ending on 27 March, just before the summer season begins. Oddly, there are then two additional flights on 11 and 14 December. Manchester to Sofia is not a bad route in winter: central Bulgaria is a good ski destination, and there will be a certain amount of business and visiting family traffic as well. Yet while the Black Sea coast of Bulgaria is popular in summer, Sofia is not a good gateway for the beaches.

EasyJet will also be looking at competition. Wizz Air is much more embedded in eastern Europe than easyJet, and Ryanair has plenty of flights too: through the summer, the Irish airline is flying two or three times a day from London Stansted to Sofia. Agreed, this is not ideal for people in northwest England, but the capacity of more than 3,000 seats a week will have helped to inform easyJet’s decision to deploy the aircraft elsewhere.

And Brexit? Well, as leaving the EU is a drag on the economy and has reduced the number of Bulgarians working in the UK, it may have had a marginal effect on those Manchester-Sofia flights. But I don’t hold Brexit solely responsible.

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Q What is the easiest and most cost-effective way to get from London to Oslo without flying? I am quite happy to do stopovers, thereby seeing a bit more of Europe.

Margaret C

A An overland journey to Oslo is a treat because of the great cities you can visit en route by train. First, get yourself to Rotterdam. You can reach the second city of the Netherlands either by direct Eurostar train from London St Pancras or the Stena Line ferry from Harwich in Essex to Hook of Holland; from the Dutch port, you just hop on a Metro train into the city of Rotterdam. The top cultural combination here is the refreshed Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen and its spectacular store, known as the Depot – an egg-shaped structure next door, built as the store for works that won’t fit in the main museum.

The next essential city is Hamburg, for which you will probably need to change in some combination of random Dutch and German stations, such as Hengelo and Osnabruck. Do not let them detain you.

Hamburg is a rugged port city rich in history, art and churches. Next stop: Copenhagen. The Danish capital is on a human scale, and rewards exploration on foot. I am also fond of Malmo in Sweden, just 40 minutes by train across the spectacular Oresund Bridge.

Handsome Gothenburg is certainly worth an overnight stay, so you can appreciate the waterside location, impressive architecture and excellent cuisine. For a final treat before arriving in the Norwegian capital, pause at Fredrikstad – the best-preserved fortified town in northern Europe.

Assuming you will be returning by surface, you could switch to the ferry from Oslo to Copenhagen, and pick up an extra city or two on the journey back: Bremen and Utrecht would be my choices, and if you are on Eurostar then Brussels will be another worthwhile stop.

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