PRACTICAL CASE LESSON 5 TRANSPORT

Student: Paula Martín Soto

Two Spanish citizens, Juan and Pepe, travel from Madrid, Spain to Beijing, China through the
Spanish company IBERIA. On boarding day, they are informed that the flight has been delayed 4
hours due to aircraft maintenance. While they wait, without having any additional information from
the airline, they order a croissant and a coffee in the cafeteria of the airport, being the bill € 10
each. Finally, they arrive in China 2h and 55 minutes late compared to the originally scheduled
time.

Once arrived in Beijing, Juan's suitcase is not delivered because it is lost, which means that he has
to buy clothes in China; Also, Pepe's suitcase arrives with visible damage to the wheels that make it
useless.

Regarding the return flight, which had a stopover in France and was operated by AirFrance, the day
before boarding they announced that the flight was cancelled due to a last-minute flights reduction
due to the coronavirus. So Pepe and Juan had to buy another return flight with a higher price.

1. What legal regulations apply to the case?

We can use, Law 48/1960, of July 21, on Air Navigation, but applicable to the case we use
Regulation (EC) No. 261/2004, of the European Parliament and of the Council of February 11,
2004, as it is a liability case.

2. What rights do these passengers have in the case of delay in the outward flight
(Madrid-China)? And in the event that the flight is delayed by a whole day?

A flight will be considered delayed if, with respect to its scheduled departure time, in this case,
the delay was almost three hours, but Madrid from China are more than 3500km apart, so the
compensation in this case for the delay would be around 600 euros.

3. Do they have any right in the present case of cancellation of the return flight?

In this case, the carrier is obliged to assist the passengers affected by the cancellation. The carrier
must offer affected passengers an alternative flight with a departure time the day after the canceled
flight. You can request a refund of the ticket price or request alternative transport as soon as
possible. They have the right to a compensation as they have been informed with less that 14 days
of anticipation, in this case, informed only the day before of the flight. In this case, because of the
distance and such a few hours of anticipation, the have the right of 600 euros of compensation.

4. What rights would passengers have regarding luggage?

They have a right to a compensation due to the Montereal Agreement. Because one of the luggage is
lost, and the other one is truly damage. In the event of destruction, loss or damage to luggage,
liability is limited to 1,000 degs, about €1,230 per passenger, unless the passenger has delivered a
declaration of the value of the luggage at the destination when checking in the luggage and has paid
the corresponding supplement. In this case we suppose they didn’t give any declaration. So they
would have to receive a compensation.