If drones obstruct my flight plans, what are my rights?

Q What’s the deal with rights with all these drone shutdowns? Is the airline still liable to get you home?

Simon W

A Munich is the latest airport to be temporarily closed due to unauthorised drone activity, following similar incidents in Warsaw, Copenhagen and Oslo. In the past month, dozens of flights have been diverted and cancelled, wrecking the plans of thousands of passengers. But almost all those travellers should have been protected by European air passengers’ rights rules to offer care and onward travel.

If you are booked to fly from an EU or UK airport, and your flight is cancelled, the carrier must provide an onward flight as soon as possible – on any airline that has seats available. Unless the cancelling carrier has an alternative flight available on the same day, it must enable you to fly on a rival. (Having said that, a number of airlines are reticent about revealing this aspect of your rights.)

While you wait to be flown to your destination, the carrier must provide meals as appropriate and, if necessary, a hotel room. In practice, when thousands of passengers are stranded in a case of mass disruption, the airlines leave it to their customers to find accommodation. When flights are diverted – including to another country, as we have seen during drone disruption – the airline is responsible for providing care while getting passengers to their final destination, except in the rare case that it is a non-EU/UK carrier flying from outside Europe.

European airlines loathe these regulations, and I can understand why. Whatever the cause of disruption, the carriers must pick up the tab. Fire cutting power to London Heathrow? Drones dispatched by an unknown assailant? French air-traffic controllers walking out (as will happen next week, from 7–10 October)? Every time, the airline cannot dodge its obligations, which are open-ended. If my flight from Palma to London Heathrow on Wednesday is cancelled due to the French strike, British Airways must provide care and an alternative, whatever the cost.

It is comforting for passengers to know that the law bestows protection. But with incidents of flight disruption becoming more frequent, the financial burden is increasing. Travellers ultimately pay the price through higher fares, and I believe we will soon see changes to reduce rights – perhaps by capping the cost or time for which care must be provided.

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Q I’m an unpaid carer for my adult disabled son. I’m due to return from Biarritz to Edinburgh on 9 October after a short respite break. I’m extremely worried as my son requires 24-hour care at home. If Ryanair cancels the flight because of the French air traffic controllers’ strike, do I have any rights to help me get home?

Name supplied

A I am so sorry you are in this tough position. Respite must be extremely important to you, and the last thing you need is to worry about whether you will be able to return as scheduled. Regrettably, there is no way of assessing at this stage how likely your flight is to be cancelled as a result of the latest strike by air traffic controllers in France. The walkout runs for 72 hours from the morning of 7 October. Normal practice for these events is this: the day before each strike day, the French civil aviation authority, the DGAC, tells the airlines what proportion of flights they must cancel.

One encouraging sign is that Ryanair is still selling seats on the morning flight from Biarritz to Edinburgh on 9 October. Statistically, most flights on Ryanair and other airlines are likely to go ahead, albeit with delays. But at this stage, no one knows which they will be. Should yours be cancelled, it is easy to state your entitlement under European air passengers’ rights rules: you must be flown to Edinburgh as swiftly as possible on any airline that has seats available (Ryanair’s next departure on the route is three days later). However, given that the strikes will probably leave between 20,000 and 40,000 passengers stranded, alternative flights simply may not be available.

I do, though, have an alternative that I suggest you keep on standby. Aer Lingus has a flight from Bilbao, across the border in Spain, to Dublin, on 9 October. You can connect within a couple of hours to Edinburgh on Ryanair. These flights are very likely to go ahead. So I suggest you wait to see if your booked flight is cancelled. If it is, book those flights immediately – before everyone else does.

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Q I travel fairly frequently from the UK to Costa Rica – changing planes in Paris or occasionally Madrid. If I understand correctly, as I don’t actually enter France or Spain, I won’t be involved with the EU entry-exit system. They don’t usually stamp my passport at the transit airport. I want to be fully prepared; I have a US Esta and a Canadian eTA to cover me in case my plans change or I get diverted. I think it’s always best to be prepared, and I will get an EU Etias when they come out.

Sue C

A Paris CDG and Madrid are two of the key hub airports in the European Union, alongside Amsterdam and Frankfurt. At these locations the aim is to allow passengers travelling between two points outside the EU (and wider Schengen area) to connect as smoothly as possible. As you will have found in your journeys: when starting from the UK airport, you are given boarding passes for both the initial flight and the transatlantic connection. On arrival in the French or Spanish capital, you go through security and proceed to the departure lounge; no need to go through passport control. The only exception would be if, unusually, you were routed UK-Amsterdam-Paris CDG-Costa Rica – this might happen if schedules were difficult, or direct flights to Paris heavily booked. In such a case, the link between Amsterdam and Paris would be a “domestic” flight within the Schengen area – requiring you to clear passport control.

I applaud your preparedness with travel permits. I have been on a flight to Paris that was late and missed the onward connection to Latin America; non-Europeans had an awful time due to not having the right permissions for France. So when the European travel information and authorisation system (Etias) begins, requiring non-EU citizens to apply in advance for an online permit, having one just in case is a good plan. Etias may arrive in a year’s time. Meanwhile, possessing a US Esta and Canada eTA is wise, too, given the number of flight options via those countries. I shall follow your example.

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Q I am in Baltimore. I flew out on Play from Stansted last week and was due to fly back this coming Sunday. How am I supposed to get back to the UK?

Alex K

A The latest Icelandic airline to collapse is Play, which sadly closed down last week due to its dire financial situation. It is always sad when airlines go bust because good staff lose jobs, passengers with forward plans lose their holidays and people who are halfway through a trip get stranded – in your case on the US east coast, without your flight to Reykjavik and onwards to London Stansted. I should confess that the collapse of Play took me by surprise, not least because the company had been talking about its financial strength. Yet it is September, when bills are coming in but lucrative bookings are not – a time when many failing carriers call it a day.

I expected Icelandair to step in with “rescue fares”: cheap tickets for stranded passengers. These are standard practice when an airline goes bust. But Icelandair says: “At this time, we are not offering special fares for Play passengers.” I have some sympathy with this policy, because Play will have been an annoying competitor, selling at a loss and, as Icelandair will have felt, trashing the market. Instead Icelandair is selling at normal commercial rates, and putting on extra flights to help stranded people – and its own coffers.

From Baltimore, though, I recommend you get yourself to New York (much more cheaply by bus than Amtrak train). At this time of year there are one-way fares as low as £211 on American Airlines. This is a cabin-baggage only deal, but I hope it works for you. Reclaiming the lost part of your flight is likely to prove difficult, but travel insurance may help cut your losses.

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