Can I get compensation for my flight’s unexpected diversion?

Q I was on a flight from Belfast to Dalaman in Turkey 10 days ago. We were due to land at 9.10pm but did not arrive until 12.15am as our flight was diverted to Cologne to offload a drunken, aggressive passenger. I know you can claim compensation if your flight lands more than three hours late. But is easyJet likely to say this is an extraordinary circumstance and refuse compensation?

Karen

A I see your flight took off a little late and flew normally for about 75 minutes. But shortly after flying over Dusseldorf in western Germany, the captain decided to divert to Cologne to offload the disruptive passenger. You touched down at the German airport at 5.30pm local time, and remained on the ground for two hours, 40 minutes.

As you discovered, when a flight diverts to an unexpected airport, there is a lot of red tape as well as police involvement in removing the offending traveller. With the need to refuel as well, the en-route delay was roughly what I would have expected.

The plane finally touched down in Dalaman just over three hours late. I imagine the whole experience was most annoying, and that you reached your accommodation at around 3am rather than at about midnight.

Spare a thought, though, for the passengers who were hoping to fly back to Belfast International late at night on the plane you arrived on. Due to the extended outbound journey, the crew went “out of hours” – they would not legally have been able to complete the homeward journey within their permitted hours. As a result, the passengers had to be put up in hotels and wait for the crew to be fully rested. They flew home 17 hours late. For them, the journey must have been even more frustrating.

Yet I cannot see any grounds for easyJet paying out compensation. The airline made the landing because the disruptive passenger could not safely be flown to Turkey, and this is certainly classed as “extraordinary circumstances”.

The episode will have cost easyJet many tens of thousands of pounds, and the airline may pursue a civil action against the disruptive passenger for its losses. In theory, any of the passengers could do the same, but you would need to demonstrate actual financial harm rather than irritation and loss of sleep.

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Q We have been dreaming about a few European city breaks in the next year and were wondering what cities are served by airports that are not too far from them. We can think of Lisbon, for example, but what are the others? Which are best, in your opinion? We don’t want to spend too long commuting to and from the airport.

“I need a holiday” via the latest Ask Me Anything at independent.co.uk/travel

A “Airports within walking distance of the city they serve” is something of a specialist subject of mine (perhaps I should get out more?). In Europe, I regard Nice as the clear winner. The Promenade des Anglais begins where the airport perimeter ends, so you can walk into the city beside the Mediterranean. Alternatively, using the excellent Vélo Bleu service, you can pay €1 and pick up a bike for the journey from the stand close to the airport, and pedal into town. Your single-euro investment covers rentals up to 30 minutes for a spell of 24 hours, and there are loads of places to drop it off.

Second in line is Pisa: it’s around a 30-40 minute walk from the airport to the city centre, though not on so agreeable a road.

Corfu deserves a mention, with a pleasant zig-zag through a residential area into the island’s capital.

Lisbon is not high on my list: although the airport is fairly central, the only walkable location is the area around Oriente station, to the east of the main part of the city, and the bus and metro links are slow and winding.

You are really, of course, asking about short transfers from plane to city. For me, two German cities share second place: Bremen and Nuremberg. Both are relatively small and a journey into town on a tram or a U-Bahn (underground) train takes just 12 minutes.

But Geneva beats everywhere; the train from the airport’s own station takes only seven minutes, and almost unbelievably there is a machine in the arrivals hall that dispenses free public transport tickets – valid for up to 80 minutes, including connections anywhere in the city.

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Q I am looking to go on holiday to Turkey for a week from 6 November 2022. My passport was issued on 8 April 2013 and expires on 8 July 2023. I am unclear if this will be OK, and what the six-month rule relates to.

Hannah R

A Your passport is valid until the day it expires, but Turkey asks you to have at least six months left on the day you arrive. So you can enter Turkey any time you like up to 8 January 2023. The Foreign Office travel advice for Turkey adds: “There should be a full blank page for the entry and exit stamps.”

What concerns me, though, is that you are one of many travellers still understandably confused and worried by some inexplicable misrepresentations of the rules for British passports.

From the start of 2021, the UK asked for its citizens to be subject to more stringent rules for journeys to the European Union (and wider Schengen Area) as part of the Brexit agreement. The request to be treated as “third-country nationals” has triggered two tests for British passports used to enter the EU: Is the document under 10 years old on the day of departure and is there at least three months remaining on the intended day of return? (In case it helps, this means you can enter the EU up to 7 April 2023 for a stay of up to 90 days.)

But the 2021 rule change has no effect on travel to Turkey or any other country. Sadly some travel enterprises and media have spread unnecessary alarm. They have suggested, without a shred of evidence, that somehow all British passports expire after 10 years. Some go even further and claim they are useless after nine years and six months. I shall continue to chase up travel firms that misrepresent the rules to the detriment of their customers – and, more widely, those organisations that lazily insist that a passport must have at least six months of life left for any international travel. That, too, is nonsense: some nations, like Turkey, ask for six months; most do not.

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Q My travel agent has proposed a flight to Australia that involves a one-hour connection in Singapore. Can she be serious, and what will happen if I (or my luggage) miss the onward flight?

Jane M

A Your travel agent is to be commended for offering a way to get you to Australia as swiftly as possible. I should say that it would be even better to spend some days in Singapore: ideally, on a long-haul trip, it is worth building in a decent stopover. This has two big advantages: making the most of the opportunity to immerse yourself in another country and helping with the adjustment to a new time zone (particularly if you arrive in Singapore early in the morning and manage to stay awake through the day).

Yet for all sorts of reasons travellers may need to get the trip over with as soon as possible. And a one-hour connection is an effective way of doing so. I believe the minimum connecting time at Singapore Changi airport is just 50 minutes between international flights, so an hour should be manageable. Changi is well organised. In my experience, there are much shorter distances between gates than at, say, Dubai, Doha and Istanbul, and key flows – such as UK-Australia – are usually arranged with the gates for arrivals and departures close together.

Airlines sell connections because they believe, most of the time, they will work. Trust me: they want you to make the connection. Even if your inbound flight is a little late, staff will be working to help you – typically meeting you by name at the aircraft door and speeding you to the next gate. They also know the number of connecting passengers for onward flights, and sometimes will hold the departure to make sure everyone is aboard.

Sometimes connections don’t work: looking at Singapore Airlines’ mid-morning flight SQ317 over the past couple of months, there have been two delays of around three hours. When that happens, a large number of people will have their connections disrupted and can expect to be put on the next available flight – annoying, but possibly you may qualify for compensation under air passengers’ rights rules. And Singapore airport has a swimming pool on the roof where you can fill in the time. But the strong likelihood is that you will make the connection.

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