On March 21, the CJEU printed the latest judgment decoding provisions of Regulation 261/2004 on air passenger rights within the case Cobult (C-76/23) regarding the opportunity of reimbursing passenger’s ticket price by way of a voucher.
A lot of our readers might have skilled a flight cancellation over the previous couple of years, not restricted to Covid-19-related causes. In case of a cancellation passengers might select to have their cancelled flight rescheduled (re-routing) or have their ticket prices reimbursed, pursuant to Article 8 of the Regulation 261/2004. Reimbursement might occur by way of numerous means, together with by way of a voucher however the latter solely upon passenger’s “signed settlement”, pursuant to Article 7(3). Thus the reimbursement by a journey voucher “is introduced as a subsidiary technique of reimbursement” (para 20).
On this case, TAP Air Portugal invited passengers to fill an internet type to assert reimbursement of ticket prices, which might result in them being instantly compensated in journey vouchers. The web type included circumstances of acceptance, with textual content clarifying that acceptance of a journey voucher precluded additional reimbursement claims in different kinds. An alternate method of reimbursement was out there, if passengers contacted their customer support division and allowed them to look at case information (paras 8-9).
The CJEU doesn’t exclude a chance that passengers might have offered a ‘signed settlement’ in an internet reimbursement type. A ‘signed’ settlement doesn’t want to incorporate the buyer’s signature on an internet type they’re submitting to the air service for reimbursement (para 34). Nevertheless, sure circumstances would must be met. First, passengers want to have the ability to give their free and knowledgeable consent to reimbursement by way of a journey voucher (para 22). It will require air carriers to supply passengers with “clear and full data on the varied technique of reimbursement” of ticket prices (para 30). This situation won’t be fulfilled if e.g., air service (para 32):
- leaves any ambiguity on its web site,
- presents partial data,
- writes data in a language that passengers might not be proficient in (e.g. data on this case was given solely in English – would this be seen as compliant if many passengers have been Portuguese-speaking?), or
- if the process for claiming financial cost is unfair if in comparison with the process of claiming journey vouchers e.g. as a result of it comprises extra steps.
“(…) the addition of such supplementary steps is liable to render reimbursement by a sum of cash harder to acquire, and thus to upset the connection between the 2 technique of reimbursement” (para 33) – that is an attention-grabbing conclusion by the CJEU, which follows current developments in different areas of EU shopper regulation. For instance, when assessing equity of cancellation means of on-line subscriptions, we’d additionally verify whether or not there have been extra steps included, which made the method extra complicated than when subscription was concluded.
