Should passengers get the money for their ticket back if their flight did not take place? If, according to a court case, the Ryanair subsidiary Lauda wouldn't. The effort for this would be disproportionate. The company argued in court in a case in which a customer whose flight was canceled wanted his money, which Lauda would have had to repay him within seven days for legal reasons.
As proof that processing the claim within the seven-day period would have been a “disproportionate effort”, the lawyer commissioned by Lauda submitted a few newspaper articles from Spain and a Wikipedia printout to the Saarbrücken district court. It was also argued that the service center in Madrid was not sufficiently available due to the lockdown. That didn't convince the court at all. Lauda was sentenced to repayment of 48,48 euros plus interest and the costs of the proceedings.
According to the news magazine “Der Spiegel”, the parent company would have had to adjust its internal structure in order to be able to process the reimbursement claims within the statutory period. The repayment claim would also not represent a “disproportionate claim”, since the effort involved in testing and reimbursement is very limited. Passengers and thus creditors would have an increased interest in asserting smaller claims. Ryanair did not react sufficiently to the Covid-19 situation.
“Der Spiegel” suspects a connection between the reimbursements that have been massively delayed or even refused by many airlines and the low number of new bookings. Customers would therefore not want to have to run after their money if their flight does not take place. According to the magazine, the industry had lost trust massively.
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