The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) dealt with a pair of aviation appeals on Thursday, issuing advisory decisions following questions from courts in Austria and Spain.
In both cases, it sided with the airlines rather than the appellants. , A passenger is seeking compensation for a seven-hour delay due to a lightning strike, and on the other hand a woman is seeking additional non-physical damages for her lost dog.
‘Extraordinary circumstances’ may arise due to lightning and liability may be limited
in the first caseA traveler who experienced long delays waiting for a flight from Iasi, Romania, to Vienna, Austria, used a German online service specializing in seeking compensation from airlines to claim €400 (about $465) in damages.
Meanwhile, Austrian Airlines argued that the plane was struck by lightning shortly before landing in Iasi, which led to a mandatory safety inspection, constituting extraordinary circumstances and therefore limiting its legal responsibility for the delay.
The court found that lightning strikes could count as extraordinary circumstances, provided that the airline “can show that it took all reasonable measures to avoid the extraordinary circumstances and their consequences, such as lengthy delays.” The CJEU said it was up to the Austrian court to determine whether this was the case.
It is noted that mandatory testing is a measure to ensure safety. The CJEU said its findings were partly aimed at preventing airlines from being encouraged “not to take the necessary measures and not to prioritize the maintenance and punctuality of their flights over that objective of safety”.
Although this notion may seem worrying, lightning strikes are quite common in aviation. Most estimates suggest that a commercial aircraft is likely to be struck by lightning once or twice a year on average, depending on factors such as weather at the airport or on the route it flies.
Modern design features, redundancies for core systems, and the aircraft’s aluminum fuselage acting as a Faraday cage mean that strikes, which have caused some major aircraft accidents in past decades, very rarely pose a serious threat to modern passenger aircraft in flight. However, they can cause damage that must be repaired on the ground.
Pets carried in the hold count as luggage, not passengers
Thursday’s second case This involves an event that you would hope would prove less common than a flight being delayed by lightning.
A Spanish woman is suing Iberia Airlines after her dog got lost at Buenos Aires airport.
“The dog ran away while being transported on the plane and could not be recovered,” the CJEU said in summary.
The traveler claimed compensation of €5,000 (approximately $5,800) for non-physical damages resulting from the death of his dog.
Meanwhile, Iberia accepted its liability and the woman’s right to compensation, but argued that it should be within the limits set for compensation for lost goods.
The Spanish court hearing the case referred it to the CJEU, asking whether the concept of “baggage” in the Montreal Convention governing air travel includes or excludes pets traveling with passengers.
“In accordance with the Montreal Convention, aircraft carry out the international carriage of persons and baggage, in addition to the carriage of goods,” the CJEU wrote in summarizing its decision.
It states, “The concept of ‘persons’ corresponds to that of ‘passengers’, with the result that a pet cannot be considered a ‘passenger’.” “As a result, for the purposes of air travel, a pet falls within the concept of ‘baggage’ and compensation for damage resulting from the loss of a pet is subject to baggage liability rules.”
It said the passenger had not submitted a special declaration of interest in delivery, a formal step that involves paying additional charges, which would have allowed them to increase the liability limit for precious cargo.
It states that EU rules on animal welfare protection do not prevent pets from being considered “baggage” for the purposes of aviation litigation, “on the condition that close attention is paid to animal welfare requirements when carrying them.”
Edited by: Roshni Majumdar