Frustrated after being grounded en route to a city break in Poland and dismayed at the treatment he received, Mark Latham sued the airline ... and found it was a surprisingly simple and effective solution.

When your flight is late, diverted or cancelled, EU-wide rules set out how much compensation, care and accommodation you can expect from airlines.

But, despite a Court of Appeal ruling last year that was supposed to settle the issue once and for all, the treatment passengers actually receive still varies wildly from airline to airline.

That was the experience of this writer during a weekend city break to Warsaw last autumn. Two hours into my flight from Glasgow, fog descended on the Polish capital causing the airline to be diverted to Gdansk – some 180 miles away.

I was flying with the Hungarian budget airline Wizz Air on a flight scheduled to land at midnight, having pre-booked and paid for three nights in a Warsaw hotel.

Dozens of flights heading for Warsaw that evening were also diverted to Gdansk, but – as I witnessed – the standard of care given to passengers in this type of situation varies enormously.

Some airlines gave stranded passengers meal and accommodation vouchers, made hotel bookings on their behalf, arranged for taxis and booked them onto flights (often with rival airlines) to Warsaw the following day.

No such treatment was offered by Wizz Air, whose passengers were ordered to wait outside the airport for a bus that would take us overnight to Warsaw – a journey of some five hours. The problem, as it turned out, is that there were not enough buses to go round.

After waiting over three hours for the promised bus, I gave up, deciding instead to check into an airport hotel and book myself onto a flight to Warsaw the following day. I eventually arrived there some 16 hours later than originally scheduled.

Wizz Air refused to refund the cost of my overnight stay in Gdansk (£54), the flight from Gdansk to Warsaw (£81), or the wasted hotel night in Warsaw (£67), instead offering to pay me £15 – the cost of a train ticket from Gdansk to Warsaw.

I referred my case to the UK’s Civil Aviation Authority, which agreed that I had a case for compensation. Unfortunately, the watchdog simply acts as an honest broker between passengers and airlines, and can’t – until such time as mooted ombudsman-style bodies are set up – force an airline to cough up. But the CAA did suggest that I lodge a small claims summons through my local sheriff court.

Suing Wizz Air for breach of contract for failing to get me to my destination turned out to be a relatively simple procedure that cost £73 in court fees and did not require the services of a solicitor. Wizz Air at first said it would dispute the action and a trial date was set by the court. But, on the eve of the hearing, Wizz Air backed down and agreed to refund my air fare as well as the court fees.

My advice to anyone thinking of going down the same route: if you haven’t been given a copy by your airline, download “EC Regulation No 261/2004” from the internet to check whether you have rights to compensation, a refund or any other payment; have a look at the advice for passengers on the CAA website; go to the Companies House website to obtain the UK registered address of the airline you are complaining about (which the court needs to serve the summons), and look at the free advice on issuing a small claims summons on the scotcourts.gov.uk website (sheriff court staff are also helpful when it come to giving advice to non-lawyers on which forms need to be filled and filed). Law firms specialising in securing compensation for flight delays calculate that passengers in the UK are entitled to £3.89 billion in unclaimed flight compensation – so it might well be worth putting in a claim.

Wizz Air is one of three airlines that was, earlier this year, singled out by the CAA for poor handling of passengers hit by flight disruptions. In March the CAA launched enforcement action against Wizz Air as well as Jet2 and the Irish national carrier Aer Lingus over alleged breaches of consumer law, including their approaches to paying flight delay compensation and informing passengers of their rights.

Jet2 and Wizz Air had failed to satisfy the regulator they are consistently paying compensation for disruption caused by technical faults. Both airlines had also imposed two-year time limits for compensation claims to be made, despite a court of appeal ruling that passengers have up to six years to take a claim to a court. J2 and Aer Lingus had also failed to satisfy the CAA that they provide passengers with information about their legal rights when flights are disrupted.

Last week, all three airlines agreed to change their policies on how passengers are helped when flights are disrupted, although Wizz Air insists that it will continue to impose a two-year limit for claims. As a result, the CAA has referred the airline to the Hungarian Authority for Consumer Protection.

CANCELLED FLIGHTS AND CALL CENTRES MAKE FOR THE PERFECT TRAVEL NIGHTMARE

BY SIMON BAIN

Booking flights online is a breeze – until something goes wrong. After combing several websites for the cheapest flights on the right days at the right times, and re-checking for baggage allowances and card payment extras, I made a booking earlier this year, well in advance, with Expedia. Three weeks later I received an e-mail saying one of the flights had been cancelled by the airline. It was the only direct flight available on the route that day, so I went back to the site to weigh up the best new options.

Two phone calls to Expedia were needed for me to be quite certain that they were offering me the choice of rebooking, with a full refund of the £416 I had paid. So I picked a better value option, to offset the inconvenience of losing the direct flight, and paid over another £342.

Another month later, when my credit card statement arrived, I noticed there was a refund, but for only £208, half the proper amount.

I then spent an hour on the phone to the distant Expedia call centre, including waiting some 25 minutes to get through and 20 minutes for the handler to get through to the airline. Eventually I was assured the refund had been wrongly processed, was now sorted out, and would be in my account within two weeks.

Another month later, still no refund. Another 50-minute call to Expedia. Another wait for the handler to get through to the airline. Yes there had been a mistake, but it was all sorted out, and the £208 would be back in my account within – wait for it, two to four weeks.

At this point, with no guarantee that I was not entering an endless cycle, my patience snapped and I contacted Expedia’s press office. The refund arrived in my account a week later, along with a £50 voucher for the inconvenience caused – which was at first sent to the wrong account.

Expedia of course apologised, and effectively said that when airlines messed up, there was little more they could do.

Beware cancelled flights and call centres – you can lose the will to travel.