EU Court ruled out ticket flight refunds for bird strikes

Accidents have unpredictable nature and damages occurred are out of the air carrier control

by Emanuele Bonini

Mind the birds. Like in one of the most famous Alfred Hitchcock's movies, the Birds, winged animals can be dangerous and harmful, especially for your pocket. Because of them, you can miss your flight, your journey and your money. According to the the European Court of Justice, delays lasting more than three hours can't be refundable in case of technical problems due to birds. Although bird strikes are episodes not so rare to happen, for the EU judiciary body such events can't be foreseen and not even predicted. That means air carrier are exempted from refunding passengers for their tickets. The EU legislation foresee that air passengers have the right to be reimbursed every time occurs a delay of more than three hours. This happens even in case of technical problems, but not if these are produced of birds got into the plane engine.

There is not only the unpredictable and exceptional nature of bird strikes to "save" air carriers from their repayment obligations. The ECJ ruled that the problems of caused by these accidents to the plane are out of control of the company and its personnel. This the reason why the Court decided to reject the appeal submitted by two European citizens who experienced a five hours delay flight in 2013. Birds are out there, so pay attention. Or simply be ready to pay.

«Elections not a reason for inaction», ECB chief blamed

Mario Draghi criticized the Member States do very little to implement structural reforms

by Emanuele Bonini

Reforms, reforms, reforms. Once again, the president of the ECB, Mario Draghi, urged the governments to implement what is needed to exit the crisis once and for all, calling the Member States not to hide behind the elections as a pretext to avoid maintaining the promised efforts. Draghi has been insisting on the need for structural reforms since he assumed his post, and he still renews his appeal. The latest call was made on at the end of the meeting of the governing council of the European Central Bank, which to decided to maintain unchanged the interest rates and to go on with the Quantitative Easing. The non-standard monetary policy measures, confirmed at the net asset purchases of the new monthly pace of €60 billion, are intended to run until the end of December 2017 or beyond, if necessary. It's the same old story: the ECB does its own part, but the Member States have to do their own. «Things are going better. Recovery previously fragile and uneven, is now solid and broad», the Eurotower chief said at the end of the board meeting. Nevertheless, «economic growth continues to be dampened by a sluggish pace of implementation of structural reforms», whose responsibility lies on the countries of the Euro area. Always. «It’s quite clear that once countries enter into a very important political and election cycle, the push for legislating structural reforms becomes less vigorous. However, this by itself doesn’t justify any absence of action, because even without legislation you have implementation of previously legislated reforms».