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Cancelled flight? EU and UK consumer rights and what you’re entitled to

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Delayed or cancelled flights can result in compensation and other benefits.

Staff at airports and airlines across Europe are planning to strike over the coming months, causing thousands of flights to be delayed or cancelled by industrial action.

With travel plans likely to be disrupted this year, knowing how to deal with flight and train cancellations, long delays, and lost bags is more important than ever.

Industrial action can mean the ground staff or plane crew won’t be working as usual, causing flight delays and cancellations in Europe and beyond.

Not all flights will be affected, but if there is an airline strike and you were informed of it less than 14 days ago, you might be due compensation.

What are your rights if your flight is cancelled?

When delays and cancellations happen, airlines should keep passengers informed and provide food and accommodation (if the delay necessitates an overnight stay).

According to the UK’s Citizens Advice website, if your flight is covered under UK law, your airline must let you decide between a refund or an alternative flight to your destination.

If you still want to travel, your airline must find you an alternative flight, even if it’s with another airline.

Air passenger rights in the EU mean that if your flight is delayed for two hours or more at departure, the airline must offer you care (meals, refreshments, and, if necessary, accommodation). If this delay means that you arrive at your final destination with a delay of more than 3 hours, you may also be entitled to financial compensation.

Can I claim compensation if my flight is cancelled or delayed?

You may be able to claim compensation if your flight arrives at its destination more than three hours late. The amount is based on how far you are flying.

According to the EU website, EU air passenger rights apply:

If your flight is within the EU and is operated either by an EU or a non-EU airline

If your flight arrives in the EU from outside the EU and is operated by an EU airline

If your flight departs from the EU to a non-EU country operated by an EU or a non-EU airline

If you have not already received benefits (compensation, re-routing, assistance from the airline) for flight related problems for this journey under the relevant law of a non-EU count

How to claim compensation

You should claim compensation directly from the airline rather than use an online flight compensation service. Third parties will take a percentage of your claim amount in exchange for their services, so you’ll get less money.

Search your airline’s website or call their customer services department to get more information on what compensation you’re entitled to.

While you can claim cash compensation in some circumstances, this doesn’t apply when cancellations or delays are attributed to ‘extraordinary circumstances’ – things beyond the airline’s control like extreme weather.

What happens if an airline cannot fly you home that day?

When a flight delay necessitates an overnight stay, the airline must arrange and cover the accommodation cost for passengers, including transportation to and from the accommodation.

If you need to make your own travel and accommodation arrangements in the event of a flight cancellation or long delay, the airline should refund reasonable costs.

You should retain copies of all receipts and book the cheapest alternative ticket and hotel available so that the airline can facilitate your claim.

What happens if your flight is delayed for three or more hours?

You are entitled to assistance such as food vouchers if your flight is delayed by more than two hours.

You’re also entitled to compensation if your flight arrives more than three hours late and the airline is at fault due to events such as technical difficulties or overbooking.

Passengers can also get a full refund if they are delayed by more than five hours and no longer want to travel.

You’re unlikely to get compensation if the delay was because of something outside the airline’s control, for example, bad weather or a security risk.

What assistance do airlines provide?

Here’s what assistance airlines typically provide in the event of a flight delay:

Refreshments and meals: a reasonable amount of food and drink (often in the form of vouchers)

Communication: Airlines are obligated to provide means of communication, such as access to phone calls or emails, to inform passengers about the delay and their rights.

Accommodation: If the delay necessitates an overnight stay, airlines must arrange and pay for accommodation and transportation between the airport and the accommodation.

Alternative Transport or Refund: Passengers can choose between rebooking on an alternative flight or receiving a refund.

If your airline cannot arrange assistance, you can pay for this and claim the costs later. In this case, the Civil Aviation Authority advises people to keep receipts and only spend what is necessary.

What if I’m not on a UK/EU flight?

If you didn’t travel on a UK or EU-regulated flight, you won’t be covered by the UK/EU flight delay compensation scheme.

However, most airlines have a contractual obligation to offer passengers a choice between a later flight, alternative transport or a refund.

If the Montreal Convention covers your airline, you might be able to claim for any losses caused by a delay.

The Montreal Convention is a treaty governing airlines’ liability in the event of accidents during international flights.

Established in 1999, it sets standardised rules for passenger injury or death, baggage loss or damage, and cargo loss or delay.

The convention mandates that airlines are strictly liable for proven damages up to a specific monetary limit unless they can prove that the incident was not due to their negligence or was caused solely by a third party.

Check the Montreal Convention list to see if you are covered. Your travel insurance policy may also offer limited coverage for delays, so it’s worth scanning the Terms and Conditions.

What if I booked a package holiday or with a travel agent?

All businesses that provide services in the EU must comply with consumer protection rules. The European Consumer Centres Network states: “If you book a holiday, rental car, accommodation or a flight in the EU, Norway or Iceland and encounter any issues, your consumer rights are there to protect you.

If your flight is cancelled, your baggage is lost, your cruise doesn’t go smoothly, or you miss your train connection, EU legislation will ensure you obtain redress.”

In the UK, travel companies that provide packages that include a flight and that are sold to customers must protect your monies through the ATOL scheme.

ABTA also provides financial protection for UK consumers who book holidays through ABTA members. This protection ensures that consumers receive refunds or assistance if their travel company goes out of business.

Package holidays and agency booking can offer travellers extra reassurance and customer service.

“Booking through a professional agent gives you the peace of mind that you are protected in the event of any changes to your travel,” says Sarah Davies, a travel advisor from Life Begins with Travel.

“Even if just to have someone on the end of the phone to guide you through the process.

Davies explains that many online travel companies aren’t members of ABTA though, so it’s important to ensure you choose a company with both ABTA and ATOL protection “so you don’t end up out of pocket and that you’re well looked after.”

Author

  • Daniela Daecher is a twenty-something bookworm and coffee addict with a passion for geeking out over sci fi, tv, movies, and books. In 2013 she completed her BA in English with a specialization in Linguistics. In 2014 she completed her MA in Linguistics, focusing on the relationship between language and communication in written form. She currently lives in Munich, Germany.

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A 4-year cruise or a €1 house in Italy: Inside the schemes helping Americans skip Trump’s presidency

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Searches by Americans for moving abroad soared in the 24 hours after the first polls closed, according to Google data.

Following the recent US election result, Google searches for ‘how to move to Europe’ increased by more than 1,000 per cent in some countries.

Searches by Americans for moving to Canada and Australia soared by 1,270 and 820 per cent respectively in the 24 hours after the first polls closed, according to Google data.

The interest in leaving the States has not gone unnoticed by marketing firms.

A residential cruise ship is now offering Americans a four-year ‘escape’ trip while a Sardinian village has relaunched its €1 house scheme.

Cruise company offers four-year escape from Trump

Cruise firm Villa Vie Residences is marketing a four-year round the world trip to Americans looking to skip Donald Trump’s second term as president.

The Tour La Vie programme offers passengers a stay of up to four years onboard while visiting 140 countries – which doesn’t include the US.

The irreverently named packages include a one-year ‘Escape from Reality’ cruise, a two-year ‘Mid-Term Selection’ option, a three-year ‘Everywhere but Home’ cruise, and the four-year ‘Skip Forward’ trip.

Guests would join the Villa Vie Odyssey, a residential cruise ship which set sail from Belfast in September, several months into its voyage.

“We came up with this marketing campaign before we even knew who would win. Regardless of who would have won, you would have half of the population upset,” CEO Mikael Petterson told US news site Newsweek.

“Quite frankly, we don’t have a political view one way or the other. We just wanted to give people who feel threatened to have a way to get out.”

Prices start at a little under $40,000 (€38,000) a year. For those opting for the full four-year escape, single-occupancy cabins start at $256,000 (€243,000) while double-occupancy costs up to $320,000 (€303,000).

The price includes all food and drinks (alcohol only at dinner), WiFi, medical visits, weekly housekeeping service and bi-weekly laundry.

Sardinian village relaunches €1 house scheme for Americans

In rural Sardinia, the village of Ollolai has revived its €1 house scheme, now targeting Americans exhausted by the election.

The homes-for-the-price-of-an-espresso offer has been relaunched for US citizens “worned [sic] out by global politics” and “looking to embrace a more balanced lifestyle”, local authorities write on the village’s website.

“Of course, we can’t specifically mention the name of one US president who just got elected, but we all know that he’s the one from whom many Americans want to get away from now and leave the country,” village mayor Francesco Columbo told US news site CNN.

“We have specifically created this website now to meet US post-elections relocation needs.”

Those needs include slowing down and recharging with Ollolai’s dreamy Mediterranean lifestyle.

“Nestled in pristine nature, surrounded by incredible cuisine, and immersed in a community with ancient traditions in the rare Earth’s Blue Zone, Ollolai is the perfect destination to reconnect, recharge and embrace a new way of life,” the website claims.

Available properties will soon be listed online with prices ranging from €1 for houses needing substantial renovations to €100,000 for those that are ready to live in.

This is not the first time the village in Sardinia has put houses for a pittance on the market. In a bid to halt a steep population decline, Ollolai began selling off abandoned homes in 2018 to people willing to carry out $25,000 (€24,000) of renovations within a three-year timespan.

Author

  • Daniela Daecher is a twenty-something bookworm and coffee addict with a passion for geeking out over sci fi, tv, movies, and books. In 2013 she completed her BA in English with a specialization in Linguistics. In 2014 she completed her MA in Linguistics, focusing on the relationship between language and communication in written form. She currently lives in Munich, Germany.

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Catalonia’s holiday rental ban may not be allowed under EU law as Airbnb pushes back

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Catalonia has said they want to rid Barcelona of its 10,000 holiday lets in the next 5 years.

Catalonia’s recent ban on Airbnb-style holiday rentals breaches EU law, according to a complaint filed with the European Commission by an industry group.

The European Holiday Home Association claims that the ban, introduced by Catalonia in June this year, breaches the provision of services directive.

The Spanish region announced that they wanted to rid Barcelona of its 10,000 tourist flat licences over the next five years. The city has not granted new licences since 2014 but this has not helped to stem a housing crisis, with locals saying they can not find places to live at affordable prices.

Why has Barcelona’s Airbnb ban been challenged?

“We are convinced that EU law has not been respected,” Viktorija Molnar, Secretary General of the European Holiday Home Association (EHHA), said in a statement released on Wednesday.

“By submitting the EU complaint, we hope that the European Commission will take a step further and open a formal infringement procedure against Spain,” added Molnar, whose group represents short-term rental platforms like Airbnb and Expedia’s Vrbo.

The move follows legal concerns raised by the European Commission itself that restrictions brought in by the Spanish region were disproportionate to the aim of tackling housing shortages.

EHHA argues that “unjustified, disproportionate and unsuitable” restrictions breach the EU’s Services Directive, which regulates a swathe of activities from hotels to legal advice. They also said that claims about the impact of Airbnb on housing affordability are “politically inflamed”.

The lobby group may have support from the European Commission itself, whose officials wrote to Spanish authorities to protest the law in February according to a document seen by Euronews Travel.

“The Commission services consider that the restrictions laid down in [Catalonia’s] Decree-law 3/2023 are not suitable to attain the objective of fighting housing shortage and are disproportionate to that objective,” the document said.

Spanish authorities could have also considered less swingeing restrictions and hadn’t offered evidence that short-term rentals were responsible for housing market tensions, it added – noting that there were three times as many empty dwellings as tourist rental properties in Catalonia.

Barcelona is just one European holiday destinations trying to find ways to tackle overtourism.

Cities like Venice have banned cruise ships from stopping on their shores, Athens regularly restricts visitor numbers at the famous Acropolis and Amsterdam is moving its red light district out of the city centre to try and clean up its image.

How the European Commission is taking on holiday rentals

Brussels has already taken action to bring the sharing economy within the regulatory fold, offering new rights to platform workers and hiking value-added tax on short-term lets and ridesharing apps such as Uber.

But the issue could prove totemic for Commission President Ursula von der Leyen – who has created the first-ever European Commissioner for Housing as part of her second mandate, set to take office within weeks.

She has told Denmark’s Dan Jørgensen to “tackle systemic issues with short-term accommodation rentals”, in a mission letter that handed him the housing brief alongside responsibility for energy policy.

A spokesperson for the Catalan government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

CORRECTION(20 November, 10:02): corrects spelling of Molnar’s name

Author

  • Daniela Daecher is a twenty-something bookworm and coffee addict with a passion for geeking out over sci fi, tv, movies, and books. In 2013 she completed her BA in English with a specialization in Linguistics. In 2014 she completed her MA in Linguistics, focusing on the relationship between language and communication in written form. She currently lives in Munich, Germany.

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Microsoft pitches AI agents that can perform tasks on their own at annual Ignite event

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The move has been criticised by other tech companies who have branded Microsoft as being a “panic mode”.

In opening remarks to a company conference in the United States on Tuesday, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has set the stage for where the company is taking its artificial intelligence (AI) business.

AI developers are increasingly pitching the next wave of generative AI (GenAI) chatbots as AI “agents” that can do more useful things on people’s behalf.

But the cost of building and running AI tools is so high that more investors are questioning whether the technology’s promise is overblown.

Microsoft said last month that it’s preparing for a world where “every organisation will have a constellation of agents – ranging from simple prompt-and-response to fully autonomous”.

Microsoft elaborated in a blog post Tuesday that such autonomous agents “can operate around the clock to review and approve customer returns or go over shipping invoices to help businesses avoid costly supply-chain errors”.

Microsoft’s annual Ignite conference caters to its big business customers.

Microsoft criticised

The pivot toward so-called “agentic AI” comes as some users are seeing limits to the large language models behind chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini and Microsoft’s own Copilot.

Those systems work by predicting the most plausible next word in a sentence and are good at certain writing-based work tasks.

But tech companies have been working to build AI tools that are better at longer-range planning and reasoning so they can access the web or control computers and perform tasks on their own on a user’s behalf.

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff has criticized Microsoft’s pivot. Salesforce also has its “Agentforce” service that uses AI in sales, marketing, and other tasks.

“Microsoft rebranding Copilot as ‘agents’? That’s panic mode,” Benioff said in a social media post last month. He went on to claim that Microsoft’s flagship AI assistant, called Copilot, is “a flop” that is inaccurate and spills corporate data.

Author

  • Daniela Daecher is a twenty-something bookworm and coffee addict with a passion for geeking out over sci fi, tv, movies, and books. In 2013 she completed her BA in English with a specialization in Linguistics. In 2014 she completed her MA in Linguistics, focusing on the relationship between language and communication in written form. She currently lives in Munich, Germany.

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