In the coming months, Ryanair will receive no less than 500 subpoenas from Flight Assistance, which helps air passengers obtain financial compensation and ticket refunds from airlines for flight delays and cancellations.
Refundmore has gathered cases on behalf of more than 1,000 customers seeking financial redress from the airline and is now ready to go to court to fight for what they believe passengers are rightfully entitled to.
With the many cases, Refundmore wants to send a signal to Ryanair that the airline is too slow and poor in their handling of passenger claims, explains Benedikte Bolvig Lund, lawyer and legal director at Refundmore.
"In our experience, when airlines like Ryanair have too much time to process cases, they come up with all sorts of objections of varying degrees of merit to avoid paying compensation. But we will not accept that passenger rights are disregarded in this way. Airlines must be forced to consider passengers' rights to compensation and ticket refunds, and we see this as our responsibility," says Benedikte Bolvig Lund.
Refundmore is now doing just that with 500 subpoenas totalling DKK 3.2 million.
There are several cases where they come from
The lawsuits come in the wake of a Supreme Court judgement in April, where Ryanair won a case regarding the payment of ticket refunds via an online ticket intermediary, a so-called OTA. Refundmore was not satisfied with the outcome because it has created greater uncertainty about passengers' rights in relation to the payment of ticket refunds.
"It shouldn't be necessary to have a legal background and fight to get back something that is rightfully yours. But unfortunately, the Supreme Court case showed us that this will continue to be the case. There are still many passengers who suffer every day from Ryanair's business practices," says Benedikte Bolvig Lund.
She also states that Refundmore has many more cases with compensation claims than the 500 they are submitting this time round.
Air passengers are entitled to compensation if their flight is cancelled or delayed for more than three hours, unless the cause is beyond the airline's ordinary business or control and could not have been avoided. Examples include external strikes, terrorism, military coups, extreme weather conditions or flight bans. Passengers are also entitled to a refund of the ticket price or a new ticket in case of cancellation, overbooking or delay of more than five hours.
