Western-European airspace closure in progress

[Shiv Mathur]

I too cannot understand why Zinger is equating a brake system leak (airline responsibility) to an 'act of God'.  

Also, when he said "No law or constitution can overrule natural justice", I don't see why it should be 'natural justice' for the airline to be left holding the baby when it is no more responsible for flight cancellations than the passengers are.

Shiv

[Zinger]

Shiv, Jeroen D,
I equated the two events in which people got stuck due to delay/ cancellation, only from the standpoint of the travellers. There are quite a few who have no alternative but to use air travel, who do not hold a credit card, and whose budget cannot cover a night in a hotel, let alone a family for a week. Natural justice in such case and there are many of them even in Europe, is to assist/ compensate at least partially. I know there is no such arrangement for other means of travel, however flight is nowadays a common transportation means also for the less well off. I believe it is not enforceable in the ash case though, according to current laws.  

Act of God can be anything depending on belief, the European Union legal definition is "extraordinary circumstances that could not have been avoided by any reasonable measure".

The relationships among countries, and between airlines and passengers were defined by a few international aviation conventions, notably:
a. Warsaw Convention 1929 (superseded by Montreal Convention 1999), defining compensation following air accidents
b. Chicago Convention 1944 and amendments, establishing ICAO and international flight rules.
Certain countries went on to pass their own laws on these matters, but members of the subject international conventions, are bound by them.

[Phil Bunch]

In the US, we apparently do not have a Europe-style requirement for reimbursement in case of passenger delays, volcanoes, etc.

In listening to the news commentators discuss this issue, one aspect of the volcanic ash situation caught my attention - a volcanic ash cloud is unusual in that it includes an open-ended time line.  The financial obligation to the airlines would be without limit, in principle.

From reading a few articles, most insurance companies exclude volcanic ash from their insured risks, although a couple of the most expensive travel insurance plans may be exceptions (at great cost).


Yet, with so many people stranded during the volcano, and with so many people unable to support themselves indefinitely while away from work and home, is there a solution?
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It is tiresome that so many major issues these days do not have good solutions!  For example, the debt of Greece (and Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Spain ...  UK, Japan, US, and EVERYONE except China and Germany!).  

The US news media seem to be accepting that the Euro will collapse, something I would not have thought possible until the financial crisis destabilized so many aspects of the world economy.  One has images of falling dominoes, houses of cards, etc.

[Jeroen Hoppenbrouwers]

Wikipedia is a nice starting point for the EU rules:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_261/2004