Strikes: whose walkout decides whether you get paid

On this page 16

1. Why a carrier's own strike does not excuse it
2. Air traffic control strikes: the genuine defence
3. Airport and ground handler strikes: the contested middle
4. A quick way to classify your own disruption
5. The mislabelling problem
6. Advance notice and the cancellation rules
7. What you are owed whatever the answer
8. Putting the claim
9. Why airlines persist
10. Why the courts drew the line where they did
11. Sympathy action and strikes at other airlines
12. Claiming for a strike you knew about when you booked
13. If the strike cancelled your return as well
14. Keep the announcement
15. Check the date against the news
16. In short

Strikes produce some of the largest single-day disruption in European aviation, and some of the most confidently wrong refusal letters. The law here is clearer than airlines imply, and it turns on one question: whose industrial action was it?

Why a carrier's own strike does not excuse it

The reasoning follows the same logic the courts applied to technical faults. Extraordinary circumstances are events not inherent in the normal exercise of the carrier's activity and beyond its actual control. Industrial relations with your own workforce fail both tests.

Managing employees, negotiating pay and conditions, and dealing with the consequences when those negotiations break down are part of running an airline. A dispute with your own pilots is not an external shock imposed on the business; it is an outcome of decisions the business took. The Court of Justice has treated a carrier's own industrial action — including action arising from a restructuring announced by management — as part of the normal exercise of its activity rather than something extraordinary.

So if your flight was cancelled because the airline's pilots or cabin crew walked out, compensation is due, whatever the letter says. This includes strikes that were announced weeks in advance and strikes the airline says were "unlawful" or "wildcat" — the characterisation of the dispute between the airline and its unions does not change your position as a passenger.

Air traffic control strikes: the genuine defence

ATC strikes are different in kind. Air traffic controllers are not the airline's employees, the airline has no influence over the dispute, and when a national airspace is restricted there is nothing the carrier can do to fly through it. This is the clearest extraordinary circumstance in the whole regulation.

French ATC action is the recurring example, and because so much European traffic crosses French airspace, a strike there disrupts flights that never intended to land in France. That is a legitimate reason for a delay on a route between, say, Scotland and Spain.

Two things are still worth asking. Was your specific flight actually affected, or was a blanket cause code applied to an entire day's operation? And what reasonable measures were taken — rerouting around the affected airspace, for instance — given that many carriers do continue operating during these events. ATC delays in detail.

Airport and ground handler strikes: the contested middle

Between those poles sit strikes by people who are neither the airline's staff nor controllers: baggage handlers employed by the airport, security staff, refuellers, or an independent ground handling company contracted by the airline.

The airline's argument is that these are third parties beyond its control, which is true as far as it goes. The counter-arguments are two. First, where the airline contracted that handler, it chose its supplier and bears some responsibility for that supplier's capacity to deliver — this is a weaker position than a pure third party. Second, and more usefully, the second limb still applies: what reasonable measures were taken? If baggage handlers struck, could the flight have operated with hand baggage only, or with management cover, as airlines frequently do arrange?

These claims are genuinely arguable rather than clear-cut. They are worth submitting, because the airline must justify the defence and often has not thought about the reasonable-measures limb at all.

A quick way to classify your own disruption

Who was striking	Extraordinary?	Compensation
The airline's pilots	No	Payable
The airline's cabin crew	No	Payable
The airline's own ground staff	No	Payable
Air traffic controllers	Yes	Not payable
Airport security or airport operator staff	Arguable	Worth claiming
Contracted third-party handlers	Arguable	Worth claiming
A different airline's staff	Yes	Not payable
Rail or road strike stopping crew reaching the airport	Arguable	Worth claiming

The mislabelling problem

The most common difficulty is not legal but factual: refusal letters say "strike action" without saying whose. That ambiguity is doing work, because the word covers both the strongest defence available and one of the weakest.

Ask directly. "Please confirm which workforce was taking industrial action, and whether they were employed by the airline, by the airport, or by a third party." It is a simple factual question the airline plainly knows the answer to, and an unwillingness to answer tells you a good deal.

Check the news independently too. Strikes are public events, announced in advance and reported. If the only industrial action on your date was by the airline's own pilots, a letter blaming "strike action" is blaming something compensable.

Advance notice and the cancellation rules

Strikes are usually announced days or weeks ahead, which brings the cancellation notice rules into play separately from the extraordinary-circumstances question.

If the airline told you at least fourteen days before departure, no compensation is payable regardless of cause. Inside fourteen days, compensation is due unless the cause was extraordinary or the re-route offered fell within the timing exceptions. So a pilot strike announced three weeks out, with your cancellation notified at the same time, will not produce a payment — not because the strike was extraordinary, but because you had notice.

Conversely, an airline that knew about announced industrial action and cancelled your flight only two days before has given you a claim, because its own staff's strike is not a defence and the notice period does not save it.

What you are owed whatever the answer

As with weather, the duty of care survives every extraordinary circumstance. Even on an ATC strike where no compensation is payable, the airline must provide meals proportionate to the wait, and a hotel with transport where you are kept overnight, for as long as the disruption lasts.

During a multi-day strike that can mean several nights, and it is uncapped. Airlines sometimes imply that a strike relieves them of this. It does not, and it is the part passengers most often fail to claim. Keep receipts, keep it modest, and submit it separately. What gets reimbursed.

Your choice between a refund and re-routing at the earliest opportunity also stands. During a strike the airline's own next seat may be days away, and "earliest opportunity under comparable conditions" can mean a competitor's flight. Ask in writing, keep the refusal, and claim the cost of a reasonable replacement if you have to buy one.

Putting the claim

State the flight, the arrival gap, the distance band and the amount. Then add one paragraph on cause:

That paragraph closes off the vague answer. Work out your figure on the calculator first so the letter names a specific sum.

Why airlines persist

It is worth understanding that the refusal is usually automated — triggered by a cause code attached to the flight rather than by anyone assessing whether this particular strike was compensable. The code says "industrial action" and the letter follows. Nobody has considered whose action it was.

That is why a single specific question frequently resolves these claims: you are not asking the airline to change a reasoned decision, you are asking for the decision to be made properly for the first time. Claims that come back with a real answer at the second attempt are the norm rather than the exception.

Why the courts drew the line where they did

It is worth understanding the principle, because it predicts how borderline cases resolve. The test is not whether the airline was at fault, and it is not whether the airline could have prevented the strike. It is whether the event is inherent in the normal exercise of the carrier's activity, and whether it was within the carrier's actual control.

Employing people is inherent in running an airline, and so is the possibility that employment relations break down. That is true even where management behaved reasonably and the union behaved unreasonably — the regulation is not apportioning blame between an airline and its staff, it is deciding who bears the cost as between an airline and a passenger. The passenger had no part in the dispute at all and no means of anticipating it, whereas the airline is at least a participant.

Apply that reasoning to a new fact pattern and you can usually predict the answer. A strike by workers the airline chose and contracted sits closer to the inherent end. A strike by a national public body the airline has no relationship with sits closer to the external end. The further the striking workforce is from the airline's own decisions, the better its defence.

Sympathy action and strikes at other airlines

If another carrier's staff strike and that disrupts your airline — through shared ground handling, or because a codeshare partner cancelled the aircraft — the position is generally favourable to the airline, because the dispute is genuinely someone else's. But establish which airline actually operated your flight before accepting that, because on a codeshare the operating carrier may be the one whose staff were striking. Codeshares and who pays.

Claiming for a strike you knew about when you booked

Booking a flight during announced industrial action does not waive anything. There is no principle of assumed risk in the regulation, and nothing in an airline's terms can remove a statutory entitlement. If you booked knowing a pilots' strike was scheduled and your flight was then cancelled inside fourteen days, you claim exactly as anyone else would.

If the strike cancelled your return as well

Industrial action often runs for several days, taking out both halves of a trip. Each cancelled flight is a separate entitlement, assessed separately, and you should claim them separately with separate references. Where the outbound was cancelled with three days' notice and the return with three weeks', the two will resolve differently even though they arose from the same dispute — the notice period is tested per flight, not per booking.

There is a second point worth making on a cancelled outbound. If you no longer want to travel at all because the strike has eaten the trip, you are entitled to a refund of the whole booking including the return leg you have not used, where the remaining flights no longer serve any purpose. Airlines routinely refund only the cancelled sector and leave you holding a useless return. Ask for the full refund explicitly and say why.

Keep the announcement

Strike notifications are usually sent by email or push notification and they frequently name the workforce involved, because the airline is explaining itself to customers rather than defending a claim. That early message is often more candid than the eventual refusal letter, which tends to say only "industrial action". Save it the day it arrives.

Check the date against the news

Industrial action is public. A minute spent establishing which workforce struck on your date, from contemporaneous reporting, is often enough to show that a letter blaming "strike action" is blaming something compensable.

In short

Establish whose strike it was before anything else. That single fact decides the claim, and the refusal letter is unlikely to tell you.

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