Passengers whose flight is cancelled must receive a full refund including any agency fees charged by a third-party agency, the EU’s top court has ruled.
In a ruling on Thursday, judges at the Luxembourg-based European Court of Justice (ECJ) also said an airline could not claim it was unaware of the commission fee as a reason for not paying the full amount.
“It is not necessary for the airline to know the exact amount of the agency commission. Otherwise, the protection of passengers provided by EU legislation would be weakened and the attractiveness of using the services of an intermediary reduced,” the ECJ said in a press release.
The case was referred to the ECJ for clarification by the Austrian Supreme Court, which initially heard the dispute between the KLM airline and several passengers whose flight was cancelled.
The travellers had purchased tickets for a return flight from the Austrian capital Vienna to Lima in Peru through a booking portal of the Opodo travel agency.
When the flights were cancelled, KLM reimbursed the amount paid minus €95 charged as an agency commission fee by Opodo.
KLM had argued that it was not obliged to reimburse the fee “since it was unaware that it had been collected, let alone its amount”, a claim dismissed by the judges.
“Since the collection of that agency commission is an ‘unavoidable’ component of the price of the airline ticket, it must be regarded as being authorised by the airline. Consequently, the airline must reimburse the commission,” the ECJ said.