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Eivind Kramme's frustration is experienced by thousands taking to Europe's congested skies every day. Sitting in the lounge of Charles De Gaulle airport outside Paris, wearied by a day of back-to-back meetings, he was told that his flight home was first delayed, then cancelled, for "technical reasons".
There was a noise in the cabin the pilot could not identify and he was not prepared to take off. SAS, the Scandinavian carrier operating the flight, had no other aircraft available.
Kramme and three colleagues had to spend the night in Paris and missed appointments in Denmark the next morning, not to mention their loved ones. But Kramme is a lawyer who knows his rights - and knows that Europe is on his side.
He wrote to SAS to demand the reimbursement of his hotel bill and 250 euros compensation for "denied boarding", citing a 2004 European Union directive lauded by Brussels as "a concrete example of how the Union benefits people's daily lives".
SAS paid for the hotel but claimed the problem was down to an "extraordinary circumstance", exempted by the legislation. Kramme went to court. Denmark's supreme court has referred his case to the European Court of Justice to decide what the phrase covers.
Airline and passenger organisations both accuse the EU of overstating the scope of the legislation, in a desperate attempt to connect with citizens, its new mantra. The European ombudsman this month found that promotional videos and leaflets prepared by Brussels were "wrong and inaccurate" in the rights they listed.
The European Commission has withdrawn the leaflets but is unapologetic. "You will understand that in order to inform passengers [on a] large scale about their new rights when travelling by air, we cannot copy the whole regulation but have to be selective. This has been clearly indicated on the information material concerned," it told the ombudsman.
So if even the Commission cannot pithily boil down its regulations, should it be trying to sell them to the average citizen? "It is causing a breakdown in the relationship between ourselves and our passengers," says Françoise Humbert, of the Association of European Airlines, which represents 29 scheduled carriers.
"It has replaced a lot of the voluntary initiatives airlines were taking. Passengers are expecting something that is not due to them. Of course we aim to give a good service but that is undermined by unrealistic expectations."
She says a lot of the problems are caused by air traffic control issues and congestion at airports. "The airlines are the most visible. The authorities have passed the buck to us."
Surprisingly, her concerns are echoed by some of those enforcing passengers' rights under the directive. "It has encouraged a lot of frivolous complaints," says Simon Evans, of the Air Transport Users Council in the UK. Complaints last year tripled to more than 6,000. "The Commission is culpable by giving out misleading information. They wanted to get good PR for Europe but created false expectations."
He says his organisation and others pointed out the errors but Brussels refused to listen. It was almost a year before it published a correction.
Under the February 2005 directive, airlines are supposed to give out information on passenger rights and to provide assistance if there is a delay of two hours, including possibly a re-routing or refund. If the delay because of overbooking reaches five hours they are obliged to give a refund and a free flight home. Passengers can also ask for up to 5,000 euros compensation.
According to the ombudsman, "One of the statements in the leaflets and posters reads: 'If you are denied boarding or your flight is cancelled, the airline operating your flight must offer you financial compensation and assistance'." He said it "wrongly suggests that compensation has to be paid in every case where a flight is cancelled".
"The ombudsman also agrees with the complainants that a statement in the video that 'immediate and automatic compensation will be paid for delays, cancellations and overbooking' is inaccurate as compensation never has to be paid in respect of delay, and where compensation is payable for cancellation and overbooking, it does not have to be paid immediately."
The problem is real. One-quarter of flights at Europe's biggest airports are an average of 40 minutes late, according to the Association of European Airlines, and the situation worsened in 2006. New security checks have not helped matters.
Airlines are now exploiting what legal ambiguities they can. Many used to consider re-routing as putting the passenger on another company's flight to the same destination. Now, says Evans, some refuse to do this. Instead, they interpret it as sending the passenger by another, often much longer, route on their own fleet. "When things are written in legal terms there is often a lot more rigidity," he observes.
There is also evidence that airlines are using a different system for cancellations, which can be blamed on "extraordinary circumstances", unlike delays. Jacques Barrot, transport commissioner, recently told the European parliament that many airlines could be "cancelling" flights that are delayed.
"Some cancellations may be camouflaged delays, to avoid the obligations for airlines to offer passengers financial compensation," he said.
Barrot is preparing a review of the legislation, to be published in March. This time his department has hired outside consultants to ask those involved for their views.
"We have had some growing pains," says Michele Cercone, his spokesman, but there were no regrets. "It is important to have a strong campaign because it is the first time passengers had a really clear framework of what they were entitled to."
He says it has been a learning experience but there is nothing the Commission would do differently.
The video and leaflets had to be updated anyway as there are new rights to incorporate from other legislation. Passengers should be told who their carrier would be, in case of route sharing. They can also consult the blacklist of airlines banned from EU airspace. Disabled passengers have gained the right to equal treatment.
Whether Kramme gets satisfaction or not, at least he will add some more certainty to this foggy area. In a UK civil judgment in Newcastle last year, a judge ruled that airlines could not be held liable for cancellations caused by technical problems.
He mused that if he had his car serviced and it broke down the following week with a completely different problem, he could not blame the mechanic who serviced it.
The judge decided it would be disproportionate to expect the airline, in this case KLM, to have another aircraft on standby. The European Court could rule along the same lines.
Even on planet Brussels, there is such a thing as events beyond the control of legislation.
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