Denied Boarding

You are eligible to get compensation for flight delays if you have been denied boarding due to the airline overbooking, under booking or any other ways of them making an error. As with delays, missed connections and cancellations, it does have to fall into the same rules which are stated in the flight delay category.

You cannot claim however, if you are denied boarding due to a fault of your own or the airport, such as you trying to board the plane whilst being drunk and disorderly.

The airline should not be able to just deny boarding straight away due to overbooking-they first have a procedure to follow which starts with asking for volunteers who may surrender their reservations.

These volunteers can either get a full refund or be re-routed to their final destination. They can also discuss further benefits with the airline.

If there are no volunteers, then the airline must carry on denying boarding to the remainder of the people that cannot fit on the plane, but must pay out for flight delay compensation and give you assistance in anything you need.

If you have been a victim of denied boarding then the best things you can do are:

• Write down all of the details about your denied boarding experience and request the airline to send you a written statement of what happened and why you were denied boarding
• Save all of your documents, your flight tickets, your boarding passes and any other documents that you think will help to process your denied boarding claim such as photos of any vouchers they give you etc.
• Be extremely careful with accepting any vouchers that the airline offers you. These vouchers are normally difficult to exchange anywhere and normally have a short validity. They could also make you ineligible to claim denied boarding compensation depending on what type of voucher it is.