Airlines owe summer travelers almost 400 million euros in compensations

As the summer holiday season kicks in, Europeans are getting ready for their flights to sunny beaches of Turkey, Spain or Greece. However, not all stories from these resort-filled countries are positive – stories about passengers left stranded after delayed or cancelled flights are hard to miss. It is no surprise since airlines are profiting from passengers not knowing their rights – airlines which provide flights to Greece owe passengers over €80 million, to Turkey and Spain – over €300 million euros for last year’s disrupted flights alone.

 Airlines are telling how hard they are preparing for summer season although statistics of flight delays and cancellations clearly show that it’s an area where flight companies try to save and maximize profits. This saving translates into less personnel or higher workloads, therefore every 10th flight across the globe faces certain impediments – overbooking, delays, luggage loss and etc. This in turn results in thousands of people forced spending part of their holidays in airport waiting halls rather than sunny white-sand beaches. As Marius Stonkus, CEO of SKYCOP, explains, scale of the problem could be perfectly illustrated by statistics – because of disruptions in EU-related flights alone airlines owes passengers around 8 billion euros.

“Turkey welcomes more than 15 million inbound tourists over the summer, Greece records double that and numbers in Spain reach 25 million. That’s a huge load for airlines. But no surprise – it happens each and every single year! Though purely looking at numbers of flight disruptions, it seems that for airlines each year those facts come as some news-flashes,” explains Marius Stonkus, CEO of the company, standing up for passengers and their rights in a fight against airline misbehavior towards flight refunds via its global platform www.skycop.com. “Statistics show that around 1% of passengers experience longer than 3-hour delays or flight cancellations already after they come to the airport. According to total passengers in EU data provided by Eurostat, although 1% sounds not so much, in Europe alone it translates into 9 million passengers.”

In such situations, SKYCOP recommends passengers to act in line with EU law and demand drinks, food and phone calls to be provided by the airline. If the wait extends through the night – the airlines have to take care of that too. Even more – do not accept any ridiculous compensation that airlines would like you to believe is a proper compensation – such as coupons for food or next trip. Every traveler is entitled to a proper moral and financial compensation.

After receiving the basic needs, fill in the claim as soon as possible or transfer your claim to refund professionals – if your flight was no longer than 1 500 km, your compensation can reach €250, if you have travelled over 1500 between EU airports, it can be as high as €400. If you travel over 3500 km and the flight is delayed for more than 4 hours – you can get up to €600.