Russians warned of massive flight delays

Due to the weather, since the beginning of this week there has been a record number of flight delays and redirects to other air ports across Russia. At the capital’s airports alone, due to snowfall, about 70 flights have been delayed since Monday, and 7 have been canceled altogether.

What do passengers have the right to expect, and what can and should they demand?

Official messages in the event of disruptions to the flight schedule are, as a rule, restrained and addressed to departing passengers. But the Runet aggregator kindly shows the overall picture, and it is not happy: as of Tuesday, 32 departures and arrivals to Sheremetyevo were delayed, 21 flights to Domodedovo, and 14 to Vnukovo.

“We need to look at how long the delay is,” says Marina Vetrova, a lawyer specializing in air claims from passengers to carriers. – If the delay is up to 1.5 hours in really bad weather, there’s nothing you can do, you just have to be patient and wait. This is the situation these days for those flying to Egypt and the Seychelles, delays of 1-2 hours. But there are also recent examples where passengers have the right to demand hotel accommodation. The flight from Moscow to Samarkand took off 8 hours later than the stated time, and to Gornoaltaisk – 7 hours later. If there is a delay of more than 6 hours at night, the airline is obliged to provide passengers with overnight accommodation in accordance with paragraph 99 of the FAP (Federal Aviation Regulations). – author).

But passengers who flew out of Sochi the night before, instead of the capital, ended up in the middle of the night at the alternate airfield of Nizhny Novgorod, where they spent 12 hours of night time in the waiting room.

“The carrier offered a hotel, but already in the morning, when the flight was scheduled for 10 am,” shares one of the passengers. – Of course, no one took advantage of this kind offer; they were afraid of missing the plane. It’s no joke, on snow-covered roads it’s an hour’s drive to the proposed hotel in only one direction.

“In such cases, if a passenger books a hotel for himself and checks into it, the airline is then obliged to reimburse expenses,” advises Marina Vetrova. – But this is only if you are clearly informed that your flight is delayed by more than 6 hours and it happens at night. In other cases, according to FAP, after a 2-hour delay, the carrier is only obliged to offer free water.

Since Monday, social networks and thematic public pages have been full of complaints like “We spent the whole night with the children in the airport terminal building, we were tired as hell, and they deliberately announced every hour that they were postponing the flight for another hour, so that we could not immediately find out the full duration of the delay and demand hot food and hotel”.

“Sometimes, especially when it comes to weather conditions, the carrier himself in good faith does not know how long the delay will last,” notes the aviation lawyer, “and there is no selfish intent in his announcements every hour. Although we must admit, the opposite also happens. Right now there are a lot of 8-10 hour delays at Russian airports. People communicate with each other via the Internet and cheat themselves, which is also unnecessary. Passengers who do not depart on time always have the right to claim compensation for moral damage. But to do this, you must first get to your destination and, in a calm atmosphere, file a complaint with the transport prosecutor’s office. She will check your “case”, and if there is a violation, she will help you file a claim against the carrier for compensation.

Meanwhile, passengers of the charter, which flew from Irkutsk to Phuket at the end of November and took 3 days to get there (due to the breakdown of the liner, the total delay time was about 74 hours; many returned their tickets with a loss of their value) have already contacted the East Siberian Transport Prosecutor’s Office. She admitted the violation and punished the airline for… 20 thousand rubles.

A more successful outcome was for the Krasnoyarsk residents, who were also stuck for 3 days – but not in winter Krasnoyarsk, but in Phuket, where they were vacationing (they had to return home on the same charter that broke down on the way). A Krasnoyarsk tour operator paid its tourists for 3 days in a Phuket hotel.

– At least give the airlines a damn! – Siberian Andrey is indignant. – Although they were recognized as violating the FAP: passengers were not provided with clear information about the delay in flight departure and its reasons, and the availability of a reserve aircraft was not ensured. In this case, those who did not leave home on time must be compensated for the lost vacation! And those who, due to a disruption in the schedule, were forced to cancel their vacation altogether, will be compensated for the full cost of the tour! I called the airline, and they calmly told me: “Well, since you’re so nervous, don’t fly anywhere until next year, there’s always confusion in the sky on New Year’s Eve.”

When asked if this is so, the lawyers evasively answer that the New Year’s time, even in normal weather, is rich in “avian misunderstandings”, and remind that due to this, the heroes of the New Year’s film “The Irony of Fate”, beloved by Russians, found each other.