Over 12.8 million travellers across the globe were entitled to compensation following a summer of flight disruptions, with one-fifth of them UK passengers, according to new research.
This year’s summer has experienced a large amount of air travel chaos, such as the UK flight industry being hit by mass airport staff strikes after a series of planned walkouts occurred over shift pattern dissatisfaction and pay.
Thousands of passengers were also hit by one of the largest global IT outages ever in late July, with around 100,000 estimated to have had their flights disrupted by the IT outage over one weekend, with major airlines such as British Airways and easyJet cancelling or grounding flights at Heathrow airport.
Travel technology company AirHelp has revealed that during this chaotic period, almost half (42 per cent) of the 78 million total passengers who departed or arrived in the UK between June and August this year experienced disruptions.
Read more: What are your rights when a flight goes wrong?
This is around 33 million travellers in total running into issues with their flights, with a further three million people having their flights cancelled and 872,000 passengers missing their connecting flights.
Out of the 12.8 million passengers across the globe who are entitled to compensation, 2.4 million of these travellers were from the UK.
Along with strikes and outages, large weather events such as hurricanes were among some of the biggest factors that have hindered air traffic itineraries across the globe.
The airport that experienced the highest number of passengers eligible for compensation was those flying from London Heathrow at 263,000, while the month of August had the highest volume of passengers eligible at 843,000.
Looking more broadly at the the eligibility of compensation across Europe, Heathrow still holds the top spot as the airport with the largest number of travellers who can seek compensation for their flight disruptions, comparing to all EU and UK airports.
London’s busiest airport is closely followed by Germany’s Frankfurt Airport and Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport in France, with 249,000 and 245,000 passengers eligible for compensation, respectively.
London Gatwick was not far behind, with 230,000 travellers who could claim compensation from their airlines this summer.
Across Europe, 112 million people who departed or arrived in the continent this summer faced some sort of flight disruption, while six million had their flight cancelled and two million missed connecting flights.
AirHelp predicts that more than 7.4 million passengers in Europe were eligible for compensation between June and August this year.
The travel technology company says that under UK261 and EC261 regulations, UK passengers are eligible for flight compensation of up to £520 when faced with cancellations less than 14 days before departure, delays of more than three hours, or denied boarding due to overbooking, all of which can be made a case for where the airline was at fault.
Tomasz Pawliszyn, CEO of AirHelp, explained that union strike action and conflicts with flight schedules are among the many reasons why this summer air travel has been plagued with large amounts of disruption across the world.
“85 per cent of passengers worldwide do not know their rights, and our mission is to better inform them of the regulations that protect them when travelling,” he said.
“This summer has had unprecedented levels of disruptions due to strikes, aeroplane shortages and scheduling conflicts, so it has never been more information for passengers to understand how they can claim for the compensation they are entitled to now and in the future.”
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