THE BOTTOM LINE
- A New Precedent for Disruption: A Dutch court has ruled that flight cancellations caused directly by government-mandated COVID-19 quarantine rules for crew qualify as “extraordinary circumstances,” exempting airlines from paying standard EU261 compensation to passengers.
- Documentation is Crucial: The airline’s victory depended on proving a direct causal link between the quarantine mandate, the specific number of unavailable crew, and the necessity of cancelling the flight. This highlights the need for robust documentation when invoking force majeure or similar clauses.
- Operational Strategy Under Scrutiny: The court validated the airline’s decision to maintain a “skeleton network” by reducing flight frequencies rather than cutting routes entirely. This shows that strategic operational choices made during a crisis can be deemed legally “reasonable measures” to mitigate disruption.
THE DETAILS
This case involved a passenger whose KLM Cityhopper flight from Amsterdam to Wroclaw was cancelled in December 2021, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. The passenger, represented by claims agency AirHelp, sought the standard €250 compensation under EU Regulation 261/2004. The airline refused to pay, arguing that the cancellation was not its fault but the direct result of mandatory government quarantine rules that had forced 40 of its crew members to stay home, creating an unavoidable staff shortage.
The North Holland District Court focused on whether the crew shortage constituted an “extraordinary circumstance” under the EU regulation. The court sided with the airline, reasoning that a government-imposed public health mandate is not an event inherent to the normal exercise of an airline’s activity. Unlike routine crew sickness, which is a predictable operational risk, the quarantine obligation was an external, uncontrollable factor. The court explicitly found that this situation, driven by a pandemic and state intervention, was fundamentally different from typical staffing issues and fell outside the airline’s sphere of risk.
Having established an extraordinary circumstance, the court then assessed whether the airline had taken all “reasonable measures” to limit the passenger’s delay. The airline demonstrated it had rebooked the passenger onto the very next available flight the following morning. It also explained its broader strategy of reducing flight frequencies to maintain service across its network—a “skeleton network”—which the court accepted as a reasonable approach during the unprecedented crisis. Because the airline successfully proved both the extraordinary circumstance and its reasonable response, the court dismissed the compensation claim.
SOURCE
Source: District Court of North Holland
