The authority said carriers were “no longer able” to refuse payments after British Airways lost a Supreme Court case over an EU261 compensation claim. EU261 carried over into UK retained law following its departure from the EU in January 2020.
BA had argued staff sickness was an "extraordinary circumstance" and refused to pay the claim. Following the case, the CAA said: “We will monitor how airlines comply with this closely.”
Anna Bowles, the CAA’s head of consumer policy, said: “We welcome the ruling by the Supreme Court that a pilot falling ill did not amount to an extraordinary circumstance.
"This provides clarity to passengers and means airlines are no longer able to refuse compensation claims by arguing that pilot illness counts as an extraordinary circumstance.
“We expect every airline that has refused claims due to staff illness or placed them on hold pending the outcome of the appeal to the Supreme Court, to now pay the compensation owed to passengers.
"We also expect airlines to apply our interpretation to both existing claims and future disruptions.”
The CAA added its view was now that the judgement “should be applied to all staff sickness at an airline, not just that of the pilot”.
It added it expected airlines “to apply our interpretation to existing claims and future disruptions”. The authority could not give an estimate of how many claims were outstanding.
TravLaw partner Nick Parkinson put the figure at between "2% and 5%”, but said: “They are such high volumes, they could add up, but a lot of airlines will have settled. You’re not talking about 100,000, I don’t think it’s that significant.”
Parkinson said one of the five judges had concluded the UK no longer had to follow EU law on which compensation rules are based.
“This case is really about whether after Brexit things have changed, whether we have to follow European case law. It paves the way for this to happen in future for other cases,” he added.
