Romanians can claim compensations of EUR 12 mln for delayed or cancelled flights in 2017

Around 42,000 Romanian airline passengers have the right to claim compensations for delayed or cancelled flights in 2017, with a total value close to EUR 12 million, according to a study of AirHelp Romania, global player in compensation claims for passengers of airline companies.

Stefan Radu, country manager AirHelp Romania: “The compensation claims level for delayed or cancelled flights is still at the beginning in Romania. This is why AirHelp committed to educate and grow the market by promoting the rights of Romanian passengers. Also to support the affected passengers, we created the free application AirHelp to check the eligibility of damages. Passengers have to sent the details of their cases, and we are in charge with the toughest part- the request processing and obtaining the damages.”

For the delayed or cancelled flights and in cases of taking aboard denial, passengers have the right to compensations up to EUR 600/person in certain circumstances.

The conditions are that the departure airport to be within EU or that the airline operator to have the headquarter in EU and to land in EU. Moreover, the flight delay reason has to be caused by the airline company. The compansations can be claimed within 3 years since the flight delay, cancellation or overbooking.

In some force majeure cases, the airline companies are exempted from the compensation obligation for passengers.

The results of AirHelp’ study showed that 85 percent of the EU citizens don’t know their rights as passengers. As a result, they lose over EUR 5 billion each year, because they don’t claim for compensations for delayed, cancelled or overbooked flights.

Also, according to the study, 53 percent of the passengers who have flights issues believe they have the right to compensations up to EUR 600 and 44 percent of affected passengers don’t submit a complaint.